[Kde-games-devel] KAtomic Screenshot Permission

[Andreas Beckermann]

On Thursday 16 August 2012, Rob Haworth wrote:
> Hello to the KAtomic Team,
> 
> I am a PhD student from Western University, writing an academic journal
> article about game design. I have used screenshots from KAtomic in this
> article and, although the game is distributed under the GPL, I would still
> like your permission to use these screenshots in such a publication. Please
> let me know whether you would allow me to use them or not.
> 
> Thank you,
>  - Robert Haworth

Hi Robert,

I am neither part of the KAtomic team nor a lawyer, so take my words with 
caution :-)
However afaik screenshots of an application are not covered by the copyright 
of the application and therefore not by the GPL in this case. The one who made 
the screenshot holds copyright over that screenshot. I am rather sure of this 
concerning German laws, for American laws see the wikipedia article on 
"Screenshot" and there under "Copyright issues", this should be fall under 
"fair use" (though there are usually additional laws for academic uses which 
are way more liberal).

For absolute certainty: The last known maintainer of KAtomic was Dmitry 
Suzdalev (at the moment there is no active maintainer for KAtomic 
unfortunately), you can contact him dimsuz at gmail.com, I am not sure if he 
currently monitors this list (though I think he does).

As a fellow open source/KDE developer though, I am pretty sure his words will 
go something along the lines of "sure, go ahead" :-)

Greetings
Andi