In an pathetic attempt to gain control over the osCommerce legacy 59 year old miss Rhea Anthony, alias Vger, has registered the word 'osCommerce' as a registered trademark in the United Kingdom.
For those that missed it: All aboard... the failboat.

The Prologue

Back in the day Rhea Anthony, a.k.a. Vger, was very active and helpful answering questions on the osCommerce.com forum.  She was offered a position as moderator which she gladly accepted.
After a very short period she quit. Like most she could not cope with the way Harald runs the project.

Rhea then build osCAnswers, an unofficial osCommerce forum that featured a couple of the more prominent and also unstatisfied (or banned) community members. The osCAnswers site was actively used to promote TerraNetwork, a osCommerce-focussed hosting business Rhea and her partner Terra run.

In October 2008 Rhea Anthony announced 'The New osCommerce Project', a sad first attempt to draw the osCommerce project to herself. She claimed osCommerce was dying and therefore needed to be saved. Many people immediately pointed out her actions were not only an infringement, unneccesary at best, but mostly very unethical. She ignored the criticism.

Two days after the announcement Rhea contacted me and asked if I wanted to support her new venture by crosslinking her new domain from osCommerce.nl. I declined and gave her my polite opinion on the matter. In short: don't be stupid, just fork the bloody thing. What followed was a rather amusing e-mail conversation in which it became clear to me Rhea had absolutely no intentions other than gaining more momentum in the osCommerce market.

Later I got a tip she hinted in public about osCommerce.nl possibly becoming a partner so I shortly commented on the matter. That didn't go well either.

The Dream Team

Rhea then announced new team members that joined her hostile takeover effort. Among the usual suspects one notorious name popped up; Bobby Easland of UltimateSEO fame.
As expected some misinformed souls saw this as a positive sign but for longtime osCommerce insiders it was pretty much the writing on the wall.

With the arrival of Bobby on the scene censorship on the spin-off forum increased to a maximum.
Criticism was now even met with threats of physical violence before it was removed. It was surreal, developers threatening to come and pay you a visit, just because your viewpoint differs... amazing.
And even then people still believed Rhea and her gang were able to provide anythng constructive to the osCommerce realm. It was so farfetched it became funny.

I enjoyed many morning espressos reading the New osCommerce Project forum at the time.
You simply can not buy entertainment like that.

The Release

Meanwhile a 'release' was whipped up, basically a stock osCommerce with minor changes and additions.
Nothing fancy, nothing groundbreaking, nothing anybody with some basic skills couldn't write on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Download it and have a look for yourself- it's still there.

But as always with any osCommerce initiative the dire need for change kept people hoping.
While others consistantly kept voicing their objection against the name hijacking the pressure mounted and Rhea and her team opted for some sudden drastic changes.

The Name Change

Perhaps Rhea did consult someone with a clue, perhaps not, fact is the name of the forthcoming software was suddenly changed into osQuantum. According to the announcement on the Kohana forum it was to resolve the name issue with 'some ardent supporters of the old project', on her own forum 'to put the teethgrinding hairpullers out of their misery'.

Not only was the name changed, the rewrite and finalizing plans for the osCommerce code were also dropped. Instead the new cart would be written from scratch using the PHP5 MVC framework Kohana.
This meant all existing osCommerce code would be dropped. Kohana is BSD licenced, so the way for a different or multi-licence model was open.

And on top of it all Bobby Easland resigned from his 'newly found home'. Just like that.
He ended his carreer with the new project as a simple sidenote in the main name change announcement, in rather stark contrast with his arrival.

According to Rhea the reasons behind this resignation ('by mutual agreement') were confidential, but in a response Bobby announced he simply needed his time for two large projects. He would however keep a role as project advisor - something that was neither confirmed nor denied by Rhea.

The secrecy and strange events sparked many questions and people now openly declared the new project as dead as osCommerce itself.

The Trademark

On the 17th of August Rhea Anthony announced her company eCommerce Ventures Ltd. had acquired a trademark registration in the United Kingdom for the word 'osCommerce'. The announcement ended with the happy notice that it would allow her to 'to proceed to officially licence the name osCommerce for use by approved partners'. Which clearly suggests her actual intentions.

Our self proclaimed osCommerce saviour did not wait long to take her shiny trademark out for a testdrive. UK based Gary Burton, a.k.a. wellknown osCommerce crack Burt, had the dubious honour to be the first to receive a nice taste of what was in store for any U.K. competition.

The community immediately responded in outrage. Several protest sites popped up and forum discussions were started on all the major osCommerce boards. The consensus was crystal clear; don't mess with our collective osCommerce brand.

With the help of the Free Software Foundation Harald has found a lawyer and will succesfully object to the registration. It's suggested an additional claim might even follow. Either way, there is no doubt Rhea Anthony and her company eCommerce Ventures Ltd. will lose the osCommerce trademark.

The most interesting part of this whole soap opera though is the community response.
Development might be pretty much dead for years, but with al her shortcomings the osCommerce software is still very much alive. Even the strongly criticised project leader can count on support from the most unexpected corners of the world. That is truely heartwarming.

And on a positive sidenote: Rhea Anthony lost all her credibility, even with the most avid supporters of her hijack attempt.

And that is a Good Thing®