Sigrid Kronenberger wrote:
We had a long discussion on the German dev-list about using screenshots
of OOo made on any MS operating system in our documentation.
[...]
We want to be sure, that we're allowed to use a free license (PDL) for
documentation and screen shots. Can we allow other users to reuse the
screen shots, and can we allow them, that they can edit the screenshots
(the German website of Microsoft says "No" to this).
The answer from the Microsoft person was, that ...
Using screen shots made under Microsoft Windows is
acceptable, as long as we mention, that the program runs on MS Windows.
Does anyone of you have any experience with this?
[...]
Should we redo all screen shots by using a different operating system
(like Linux, BSD) to prevent every problems with Microsoft? What do
you think?
IANAL, but I have worked professionally as a technical editor for
many years before joining OOo. Much of that work was user
documentation for programs that run on Microsoft Windows.
The usual way to handle this is to put on the copyright page of a
document a statement that the program runs on Microsoft Windows
and that Windows, Microsoft, Word, etc are trademarks or
registered trademarks of Microsoft Corp.
At the moment the statement in the OOoAuthors docs does not
mention Microsoft Windows specifically. It says "All trademarks
within this guide belong to their legitimate owners." This could
be reworded if we think it is necessary. I don't remember what is
on the copyright page for the docs produced directly through the
Documentation Project.
As for retaking all the screenshots on another OS, some sections
of some docs (eg setup guides) specifically talk about how OOo
works on Windows, so the screenshots in those sections can not be
redone on another operating system.
--Jean
