Hi
If we did copy the worst case scenario is apparently that we get
served with a "Cease and Desist" or a "Take down" notice. Since it's
a wiki that is easy for anyone to do at very short notice. The
problem would be if we published in printed form and were then
expected to recall all published copies.
Plus the chance of being caught out is very small. Apache are not the
enemy. Most of them are us too anyway or nearly us. When OpenOffice
was owned by Oracle there was a much higher risk of them scrabbling
around trying to find any way of making any money and causing us any
trouble they possibly could. If Apache tried to take us to court or
anything then i suspect that a lot of their volunteers would be quite
unhappy or feel a conflict of loyalties. Their customers might object
even more.
If we don't copy and DO the translations ourselves and the result is
much the same as the Apache one then wouldn't that be considered a
copy anyway? Could we prove that it was sufficiently different that
it couldn't really be considered a copy?
So, i think that in this case it is worth taking the risk because the
chance of it being a problem is fairly tiny and it's very easy to fix
if there is a problem.
I'm not sure how i would feel if the Published Guides were copying
stuff. I'm not sure how that would play out. If we had to pay people
to return any copies of the published guides then it would be a
nightmare. On the other hand the risk of that happening is a LOT
lower under Apache than it was under Oracle. It's theoretical anyway
now that LO has developed so much so quickly.
As time goes on the Faq will hopefully get updated quite a bit as new
functionality gets added and hopefully will fairly soon reach a point
where it's sufficient different that it would be impossible to take
action against it.
Just my 2cents. I'm not a lawyer and haven't studied copyright law in
any country nor international law about it. I've just followed a few
threads about this this sort of thing and made some sort of sense of
it.
Regards from
Tom