Actually, it may not be legal to rebrand OOo, depending on what you mean
by "embedding." You might want to drop a dime on a license lawyer.
Here's my layman's understanding of the Gnu GPL, under which I believe
OOo is released. The GPL says, essentially, that it's free for anyone's
use and source code is freely available, that anyone can redistribute
the package, or any subpart of it (a component of OOo in this case)
freely (and must do so freely), and make source freely available either
as part of that (re)distribution or upon request. The GPL further says
that services related to OOo (how to install, for instance, or how to
use, etc) can be sold, but OOo, itself, must remain freely available as
described above. The GPL further says that any package into which OOo,
or any subpart of it, might be incorporated--including separately
developed code, code developed by a 3d party such as yourself--itself
must be licensed under the Gnu GPL, even if the OOo component plays only
a small part in the overall new package. This renders the new package
only freely distributable, including the source code, and particularly
including this separately developed code for this new package. However,
if OOo, or a component of it, is only bundled with the other, privately
developed, package, then while OOo or that component must be freely
distributable as above, the private package can be sold and branded with
impunity. This is why the meaning of "embedded" becomes important, and
why you might want to talk to a lawyer. "Embedded" is a hazy,
boundary-crossing term.
Daniel's point remains valid, however, should it turn out to be legal,
in your particular circumstance to completely rebrand the OOo
inclusion. This isn't about hurt sentiments, however unintentional. In
academia (among other milieus), it's also legal to quote, and to
incorporate to a surprisingly large extent, other authors' work into
one's own. However, it's expected that such quotes/incorporations get
cited so the original authors' work--and resulting contributions to
one's own--are properly acknowledged. In your case, it also would be
appropriate to acknowledge OOo's contribution to your application:
perhaps on your application's splash screen, perhaps on your
application's main window's title bar, perhaps on your Help|About...
description, perhaps some other suitable location.
Eric Hines
Daniel Carrera wrote:
Dinesh Varadharajan wrote:
I am embedding openoffice component along with my application. I want
to do branding. ie.. remove openoffice.org and use my product name
instead. Is this allowed as part of licensing and if so, how can I do
that..
Well... it's allowed, but a lot of us really really don't like it when
people do that. It's taking our hard work and passing it as your own.
In addition, it hurts our brand recognition, and causes a lot of
trouble in our support lists when people come complaining that "Bob
Office" doesn't work and we don't know anything about Bob Office
except that it's based on OOo, so even those who are still willing to
help your users, can't.
Please don't rebrand OpenOffice.org. It's not nice.
Sincerely,
Daniel.
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