On 31 Aug 2009, at 15:15, Steven Degutis wrote:

Aaron,
The sound played is not part of Cocoa if I recall correctly. It is located inside Installer.app's Resources directory and you can thus technically take it out and use it in your app, if you're alright with that sort of thing.

*Technically* (since it's the word you used), that's copyright infringement, unless the owner of the aforementioned sound file (in this case Apple) says you can.

In practice, Apple seems to adopt a fairly relaxed attitude towards this kind of thing *provided* you're using system assets in the same context and with the same meaning. If you were e.g. to use the sound in a computer game or to use it in a Windows or Linux program... well it wouldn't surprise me if you ended up being the recipient of a nastygram from Apple Legal.

I'll also note one more thing; while Apple may be relaxed about these kinds of issues, it may or may not pay for you to be as relaxed. If, for instance, you ended up somehow in a legal dispute with Apple later down the line, Apple might very well decide that to raise the issue of your infringement of Apple copyrights, *even if* nobody has previously complained about the matter. If on the other hand you happen to be in possession of a piece of paper saying it's OK, then they can't really complain.

Most people don't seem to worry too much about this and just go ahead and "borrow" things from the system, but it's worth realising that there is a risk even if you don't see one.

IIRC someone from Apple made a statement a while back about developers' use of assets (I think in the context of icons, though I'm not certain), but I don't recall where or with what degree of authority. Anyone remember?

Kind regards,

Alastair.

--
http://alastairs-place.net

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