On Wed, 24 Apr 2002, Levi Ramsey wrote: > On Wed Apr 24 23:51 +1000, Geoffrey Lee wrote: > > Probably, or probably not. > > > > But we can't risk our asses just because we *think* that it's ok to use > > xmatrix without some sort of licensing. I'm sure that was what I felt when > > I removed it. > > Exactly. If Mandrake gets sued by the entertainment industry (who > spend huge amounts on lawyers) Mandrake will go under. Not "could", but > "will".
Well, instead of speculating, it's maybe time to actually consult a lawyer for this type of issues. This kind of discussion will occur more often as media companies tend to sit on their property, or what they think should be their property. Companies which do their legal homework will eventually get an edge over the ones that drastically avoid difficult issues out of fear to be sued to oblivion. This doesn't mean I don't believe Geoff made a wise decision (see below) but it should not be his decision in the first place. Some day, something will escape scrutiny and slip through. Anyway, IANAL(*) but AFAIK copyright is about copying (in terms of reproduction) the original, not about mimicking it as long as you don't pretend to represent the original. So xmatrix is actually a bad choice of name (but if the coders can show that they didn't steal the patterns from some video sequence and withdraw any direct reference to The Matrix motion picture, which makes it less attractive of course, it should be save). Guy Bormann PS: (*), i.e. visit one and don't base any decisions on my words. IANAL! :-)
