I don't think it's because of the trademark that forking it is a losing proposition. It's because of:
- the proprietary test suite
- the SQLite team's reputation
- SQLite's reputation
(which relates to the test suite)
- the SQLite Consortium, which funds the
SQLite team
- funding
The trademark is the least of these. I don't find TFA at all compelling, and I find it distasteful, but I wouldn't impute on the author(s) that they want the SQLite trademark, especially given that they didn't even bring it up.
If it were really about the proprietary test suite and fuzzer, then the manifesto should simply demand that SQLite developers release those proprietary tools. Instead they're demanding that SQLite accept a change of contributor policy and correspondingly change their code of conduct. They're wrestling for control of the brand, not merely some tools.
And yeah maybe they're after the money the SQLite Consortium gets too. But I think that's downstream from SQLite's brand recognition.
That is a fair take, and now I agree. I suspect that u/glommer et. al. hadn't understood the importance of that test suite, else they would have mentioned it. To me libSQL seems like pie in the sky. They're making demands and threatening a fork, but w/o any evidence of sufficient resources the threats are empty and the demands will go unmet.
