[libreoffice-website] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Re: [libreoffice-design] Urgent call for sample files for producing screenshots

Hi all,

Le 08/01/11 19:41, Stefan Weigel a écrit :

> This has already been intensively discussed an investigated, when we
> were making screenshots for OpenOffice.org website and
> documentation. André Schnabel even directly and officially asked at
> Microsoft. The final result of all this:
>
> Do not use Screenshots taken from a programme running on MS Windows,
> when you are going to use these screenshots in a document, that´s
> supposed to be under a free license.

I remember this discussion from the OOo lists. I may even have been one
of the lawyers involved ;-) that gave an opinion, separately to André's
direct request to Microsoft.

Microsoft considers that all of its UI, in each and every version, is
protected by copyright. Whether that would actually hold up in a court
of law is another matter, and would be extremely fact and jurisdiction
dependent, but ultimately the question that should be asked is whether
the LibreOffice project, and TDF, are prepared to take that risk. My
opinion is that it would be unwise to knowingly embark on anything that
publicly puts the project into the realms of a potential litigation for
alleged IP infringement.

Oh, and just to dispel any doubt : just because a million other people
do it without ever having any problems from Microsoft does not mean that
this project will be let off as easily. I rather believe quite the
opposite, MS will be watching this project to see whether it gets off
the ground and becomes a threat to it, much as it did with Sun. Let us
not forget that Sun and Microsoft signed an agreement with regard to IP
rights that led to the dropping of their relative mutual destruction IP
law suits, and that OpenOffice.org was specifically mentioned in that
agreement.

Caveat emptor. And yes, I'm probably paranoid ;-)

Alex


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