plugin icons in Kopete -- trademark/copyright issue?

[Scott Wheeler]

I just noticed something in Kopete today and I thought it was probably 
worthwhile to bring up KDE wide.  

Currently Kopete is using icons that are presumably copyrighted and 
trademarked by AOL, Microsoft and ICQ.  Despite this being a common practice 
in OSS IM applications, I am dubious of its legality -- unless there is 
somewhere a license for these things that I am unaware of.

So -- I guess there are three parts here -- once for each list this is going 
to:

(1) policy - We currently do at least some basic auditing for code ownership 
and licenses in KDE -- we should probably do the same for artwork and such.  
It's probably a good idea to say before every (major) release to have someone 
spend a couple of hours to glance at icons and art that are in KDE and make 
sure that they're not obviously owned by someone else.

(2) artists - This means replacing a few of the icons in Kopete assuming that 
it is decided that these should go.  Any volunteers?

(3) Kopete - Probably worthwhile to note in the future, and well, you should 
be in the loop.  :-)

Cheers,

-Scott

-- 
Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so. 
--Bertrand Russell