Raku Foundation DBA and Trademark Update
Thu, 02-Sep-2021 by
Daniel Sockwell
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< – it doesn't change any of the realities of how YAS (aka TPF, aka TRF) is organized, governed, or structured. Pretty much the only _legal_ effect is to allow YAS to cash checks made out to "the Raku Foundation" in the same way it can cash ones made out to "The Perl Foundation".
In the short term, we're hopeful that this will make the sponsorship committee's job easier – the rich history connecting Perl and Raku is important to those of us in the communities, but we shouldn't need to explain that history to someone who just wants to fund Perl or Raku grants. In the slightly longer term, I'm hopeful that having the two aliases will make it easier for the Perl and Raku communities to define ourselves as the separate (though philosophically aligned) languages that we are. Perl and Raku share deep ties,but address different use cases, and having the "Raku Foundation" alias should help lay the groundwork for separating those use cases as we present ourself to a wider audience.
## Raku trademark rights secured
The YAS legal committee hasn't just been involved in securing the dba; we've also been working to register "Raku" as a trademark. Well, I say "we", but the vast majority of the credit should go to Nige Hamilton, who shepherded the effort through to completion. I'm therefore happy to announce that we have now secured the Raku trademark in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union.
Trademark rights are mostly something we hope never to need to use. They would help us deal with situations such as someone claiming to represent Raku despite flouting our [Code of Conduct](https://github.com/Raku/Raku-Steering-Council/blob/main/papers/code_of_conduct.md) or someone trying to sell a counterfeit "Raku". I very much doubt anything like that will happen, but trademark rights are like backups – it's far better to have them and not need them than to need them and not have them.
## Laying foundations
It's an exciting time for Raku – our first independent conference just concluded, the new dispatch system (and all the performance improvements that entails) just around the corner, and the Raku AST system and all the superpowers it will unlock (real macros!) not too much further behind. In the midst of these technical and community milestones, it would be easy to neglect some of the more administrative/legal tasks. But those tasks are vital, and neglecting them would be a mistake. So a sincere thanks to Nige and all of the TPF volunteers for all the work they do to support the Perl and Raku communities.
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