Hi, > That is one of the rare instances where > we have been able, as a community, to figure out what we can > or can't do legally and apply the reasoning consistently.
Exactly that's what I want to know in this case. > There's a general "we should avoid > litigation" vibe here, but part of avoiding litigation is > being smart and understanding our rights as software > developers. It's quite frustrating because I don't think we > are consistently achieving being smart and understanding our > rights as a community, and we have been blundering along as > a result. Agree. > > Nothing, except when the discussion breaks down because no > one really knows what OUR rights are. > > We need to be working toward achieving concrete solutions > on these problems, figuring out how we handle these issues > as a community when they arise, and also working to minimize > the threat of litigation while still maximizing the > usefulness and realism of our program. I've made proposals > in the past based on my understanding of copyright law and > the Lanham Act. For instance, there is no reason why we > shouldn't have a prominent disclaimer saying FlightGear is > not associated or endorsed by any companies possibly > represented in the program, either in the base distribution > or through add-ons. There is no reason why there is no > umbrella copyright notice anywhere within the executable > file, except some people seem to think there is no copyright > on GPL software - but then what does the GPL protect? > So the question is: what are our Rights? What are we allowed to do? What not? I'm still surprised that our project we don't have a laywer like other OpenSource Projects like Blender etc. > > So why not make it easier on ourselves if someone whose > livery is in our database takes umbrage? > > I'm just very frustrated, I'm still going to use the > software, I'm probably still going to contribute to the > scenery database because that is a very small pool of > developers all of whom seem to understand what the legal > limits are in that area, but I've got better things to do > than to not get anywhere arguing about the law on this > list. Well, until now you didn't say much about in this topic here. But as I can see, you are the one in the whole Project who does understand much more of laws and legal issues than anyone others here. Heiko ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Free Software Download: Index, Search & Analyze Logs and other IT data in Real-Time with Splunk. Collect, index and harness all the fast moving IT data generated by your applications, servers and devices whether physical, virtual or in the cloud. Deliver compliance at lower cost and gain new business insights. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
