I have a bit of a problem, and I just don't see how I can resolve this problem, as it includes not only me, but SourceForge, and the creator of the SourceForge project. First a little history:

In 2003 I get the idea to start up the bsdPanel project to create an server control panel that was modular, simple and yet secure. It is meant to compete with cPanel, Plesk and others. I am a procrastinator, but in 2003 I had everything added to a CVS repository and started working, slowly but surely.

It is now 2006, and while I still have not come very far, it is still my project and I am still actively working on the project, fleshing out ideas, programming and other such items.

In July something pops up on SourceForge. A project by the name of BSDPanel. Guess what, SAME NAME. It is located at http://sf.net/projects/bsdpanel/ (Not a link to not add google rank stuff). This project has the following description:

Open Source Web Server Control Panel for POSIX & Windows Operating Systems written on several languages as PHP,ASP,C++,Perl,JS.

Wow, sounds very similar to what I am doing. Except I don't include Windows. The project was created on 2006-07-30. Now, since off course I don't want my name associated with a project with the same name doing the exact same thing, I contacted SF.net and they told me they could not do anything.

So I shot this email to bsdpanel@users.sourceforge.net:

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am contacting you about the name of the project that was choosen on sourceforge. The name bsdPanel has been in use for a project that I had created back in 2003 and have used ever since. I feel that it is in both our interests that your name be changed to something else. I have spent very much time and money on the name, which includes but is not limited to buying domain names, getting corporate sponsors, writing code, and am currently going through the process of applying for a trademark for the name bsdPanel.

As the bsdpanel project on SourceForge has not existed for more than a few months I am asking you to please rename the project. As proof that my project has existed since 2003 I would like to point out the SVN commits made, as well as the revision history which is available from http://trac.svn.0x58.com/bsdpanel/timeline, most notably http://trac.svn.0x58.com/bsdpanel/changeset/2 which contains my initial plans.

From the description on SourceForge it seems our projects are trying to accomplish the same tasks, I however feel that with the same name people will assume wrongly that the projects are related in some way.

I hope we can come to a solution that works out for both of us.

Thank you,
Bert JW Regeer

And yes I am going through the steps to get the bsdPanel name trademarked, and no I had not told anyone before. The answer I get back is in Russian, and the free online translators are unable to translate it:

Иди нахер!

The first part means "Go", I can only guess at what the rest means. I have posted a thread on forum.osnn.net to see if anyone could tell me what that means. It seems like it would mean something along the lines of "Go fuckyerself."

I don't know what else I can do, as I can't send a DMCA notice for copyright infringement, since nothing was copied besides the name, I don't have the trademark yet, so I can't send any notice to SourceForge about that. I am troubled that someone would take the name from my project and use it, while anyone could have come up with any other name easily. A quick Google shows that I had this name for a while now, and if one does the right thing and check if the name is even on Google or other search engines before naming a project is the nice thing to do.

One does not see me creating a new project called vBulletin or phpBB?