I have nothing to do with the POI Apache project, other than being a user, never contributed, nor have anything to associate other than being on this mailing list - but I'd say chill the f*** out.
The relative harms for the debug test file is probably negligible, and in the grand scheme of things, its probably not using your IP at all, rather the factual bytes that were generated by OpenOffice, or usable under US Fair Use, as long as the (which is the same/similar file type to MS Powerpoint, which is sort of the point of the example file) Your copyright standpoint on the file, its feasible to recreate the PPT to re-illustrate the failed code, that might have some similarities to your original file but not be a byte-by-byte representation of the code, and it wouldn't pass a copyright muster (assuming you even filed for copyright protections) Take a deep breath, and find something productive to do. -Eric On Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 10:56 AM, Chris Demwell <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > > In 2007, someone uploaded my IP to your bug tracker in > https://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=41357 - that person did > not have license to use my IP, and therefore you also do not. You continue > to host that file in your svn: > > http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/poi/trunk/test-data/slideshow/PictureLengthZero.ppt- > please remove it from your svn history. > > I would also point out that someone sending you a file to help you solve a > bug does not automatically or implicitly grant the legal right to use the > file for any other purpose, store, and certainly not republish the file. > You are likely illegally republishing other files as part of the test > directory in your svn and I humbly suggest that your only course of action > is to remove those files that you do not explicitly know that you are > licensed to redistribute. > > Much more collegially, that PPT was an export from OpenOffice.org (ie, not > created by MS Powerpoint) and therefore may not be an appropriate test file > for your project. I'm sorry if this has caused you any consternation in > designing or maintaining your project. Thanks for your contributions to > open source software - while I don't use POI I still have great respect for > your work. > > Thanks, > > Chris Demwell >
