Screenshot Licensing

[Mark Knecht]

On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 9:45 AM, Milian Wolff <mail at milianw.de> wrote:
> On Thursday 20 October 2011 06:42:00 Mark Knecht wrote:
<SNIP>
>>
>> IANAL, but if a program is released under some form of GPL then it
>> gives the user the right to use the program for any purpose they want,
>> doesn't it? I don't see why that couldn't include writing a book and
>> including screenshots to explain the sue of the program, but again,
>> IANAL.
>>
>> Is it really an issue of 'Public Domain' or is it an issue of what
>> license the program is released under and what that license allows?
>
> If Rohan had created the screenshot himself there would of course be no
> issues. The thing is he was apparently too lazy to do it himself and/or wanted
> to reuse the existing screenshot. Since the author of that one is unclear, we
> don't know the licensing.
>
> bye
> --
> Milian Wolff

Agreement...

IANAL, but an unmodified screenshot of a GPL program taken from some
other document should be reuable.

A screenshot of a GPL program with additional things added by someone
else to explain the screenshot very likely wouldn't be reusable as the
person who modified it has added their intellectual property to the
screenshot.

GPL certainly covers the code which generates what's on the screen,
but it doesn't TTBOMK cover anything someone does to the screenshot
that's not created by changes in the code.

- Mark