Le 15/02/11 06:18, David Nelson a écrit : Hi David,
> > I'm not sure what to say about this. Personally, I don't have a > problem with Windows screenshots but, anticipating what certain others > might say, it might be better to hold back a little longer and do > those screenshots so as to put the problem to rest... I hear you :-) Time to chime in then. Just as a reminder to all : The reason is simple : Microsoft basically says no "UI elements, icons or other bits of our copyright protected OS" in documentation under an open source licence, that is then likely to be sold / commercialised, unless they, i.e. Microsoft, give you permission to do so. 1) MS were apparently contacted in the past (by Florian from what I have read, but I have no actual confirmation of that) about giving their permission to such use in the German OOo community documentation effort, and no positive reply was forthcoming. Remember that at the time, Sun had also signed a mutual agreement with Microsoft to settle all IP-related litigation, but the agreement was not a blanket free-for-all get off the hook. Indeed, most of the details of the agreement never came out, and I'd place no bets on MS having allowed the community "free electron" aspect of OOo any leeway whatsoever, contrary to whatever Sun might have gained for StarOffice, its proprietary product offering. 2) The current authoring / documentation community may wish to throw caution to the wind, but it is my understanding that TDF would not particularly relish the thought of being accused of any sort of infringement by MS, or even giving them the chance to do so. MS have had a fairly broad communication strategy of indicating when they felt others, particularly the free software community, infringed on their IP rights in one way or another. Getting market penetration is one thing - doing so at the risk of being accused of infringement is not the way to gain the support of a more widespread public, especially those in executive IT functions, who will have their own legal departments breathing down their necks. All it takes is one press release from an antagonistic player. It doesn't matter whether MS, or anyone else for that matter, is right or wrong, what matters is the effect it will have on the project as a whole. Oh, and just because OOoAuthors / ODFAuthors was unaware of this, or chose to ignore it in the past is no excuse. They (as in the "organisation") should be equally aware of the problem, but the risks they take are their own. Alex -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to documentation+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/documentation/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
