On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 12:48 PM, Jari Häkkinen <j...@flygarna.se> wrote:
> Just pretend this discussion never was. That is, do whatever we did before > the issue was raised. Are we prepared for the consequences of negative > responses? > We are trying to find a reasonable way forward, not forget about anything. No one wants to remove existing content from the FlightGear project, even though some of that same content would not be allowed to be submitted by some authors as it stand right now. Because it was submitted by other authors or was submitted in the past we are ok with it. Our consensus so far is not 100% internally consistent unfortunately. We have some arguing for a completely pristine "do nothing without explicit permission" approach. We have some arguing for a "do whatever we can get away with" approach. Think of the implications of doing nothing without written permission. We would literally do nothing in that case except for a few very rare cases where someone did manage to get written permission -- and we would need to remove most of the work that we have done to date. But those arguing for a more pristine policy, are unwilling to actually present a specific policy -- I believe because they realize to be logically consistent would require them to advocate removal of just about all FlightGear content. The implications of doing whatever we can get away with are equally bad. This sets us up as bad guys operating only in our own self interest and puts us in a position that we at least seem willing to break laws if we can get away with it. I think a reasonable way forward is to follow the commonly accepted standards in the simulation community: that it is fine to create virtual representations of real world vehicles, buildings, land marks, etc. and decorate them with the same markings they have in the real world. We are trying to have fun and create faithful representations of the real world. If a specific company has a specific issue, they are welcome to approach us and we will do whatever we can to accommodate their concerns. Our main constraint in creating content for the FlightGear simulator is that we make sure that our work is our own, or borrowed and adapted with proper permission. As many others have pointed out, we are creating an issue here where none existed and wasting a lot of time with it. The best we can do by pursing this issue is to shoot ourselves in the foot and harm our project. If we pursue this issue, and do not proceed in a pure, self-consistent manner, we also put ourselves in the position of knowingly violating our own policies or knowingly violating our own interpretation of the law ... that is the worst possible path we can take. As the project coordinator, I have *never* been contacted by any company with any concern that we have improperly used their logos or trademarks. I have never been contacted by any company with even the slightest concern or smallest question. Look at this another way: every man made object in the world is made by some person or company. Every building was designed by some architect and built by some company or group of companies. Every aircraft design is owned by someone, every vehicle, every livery, every logo. All those things that weren't built by specific companies were designed or built by governments or government sponsored groups. Can we not agree that it is ridiculous for people to suggest that we need to get written permission before we can model anything that has been designed, built, touched, altered by any individual, company, or government without their written permission? I know that a few out there will still assert that we need some permission from some companies to model some things. PLEASE!!! Tell me where you draw the line and how you draw the line; and if possible use LOGIC!!! Until then, I submit that we should be able to create realistic and fair representations of vehicles and buildings that are found in the real world including logos and trademarks. To disagree with this position means that you are advocating that we move a *HUGE* portion of the content of our simulator. Jon: I respect your position, but I humbly ask then that you please post or send me your letters for usage permission from Boeing, Airbus, Douglas, Lockheed, Aérospatiale, BAC, deHavilland, McDonnell, Cessna, Fokker, (New) Piper, etc. etc. all of which (and more) you have modeled in JSBSim and distribute on the official JSBSim web site. Best regards, Curt. -- Curtis Olson: http://www.atiak.com - http://aem.umn.edu/~uav/ http://www.flightgear.org - http://www.flightgear.org/blogs/category/curt/<http://www.flightgear.org/blogs/category/personal/curt/>
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