Voting rights - the GNOME way

[Zack Rusin]

On Friday 22 November 2002 18:18, Rob Kaper wrote:
> > Do they? there is this guy wanting to import BlueCurve fork into
> > KDE CVS. Personally I don't think its a a good idea, but we have no
> > policy for that upon which we could reject it (like: it will only
> > cause us trademark trouble)
>
> Solution: ask Red Hat if they would object (if the trademark issue is
> the only thing that matters).

I think Aaron wanted to put FreeCurve into our CVS and people who 
maintain it didn't want the split which is why it never happend. We'd 
have to ask Aaron about that, but for now I'd suggest not importing any 
BlueCurve derivative into our CVS.

> On the other hand, there are plenty of applications in KDE which
> could have possible trademark issues, such as Kopete (all the
> plug-ins to proprietary messaging systems), 

I don't think so. Kopete code is not infringing any copyrights. Or until 
recently it wasn't. The only plugin that the protocol provider might 
not approve is the OSCAR plugin. But even then that plugin doesn't 
infringe any copyrights and is therefore completely legal.

> Atlantik (it still provides the Monopoly game), 

Hmm, that might be interesting problem. Do the rules governing the game 
go into a public domain as soon as it's available or do they stay 
copyrighted? (because I'm assuming no art from the original game has 
been used in Atlantik).

> KTron (by name), 

This might be a problem.

> KWord (by name)..

This can't be a problem, by no means. I think you're basing the judgment 
on this one based on the (g|x|k|l|m)AIM affair a couple of years ago. 
AOL had grounds following that one because AIM by definition of that 
acronym contained AOL in the name. These applications were advertising 
that on their websites - therefore missusing the name since AOL was not 
affiliated with any of them. Permutations of the word "Word" do not 
constitute a copyright infringement. No matter how you put, or how 
peculiar case you're trying to make out of it.  As long as your 
application isn't named "KMSWord" there's no way Microsoft could make a 
valid case out of it.

Zack

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