On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 6:11 PM, dmccunney <dennis.mccun...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 6:48 PM, James Hall <jh...@freedos.org> wrote: > >> It's not an ideal situation for these old drivers, but we need to be >> careful here. And I'll admit that I'm not sufficiently motivated to >> comb through all the driver zip files (I assume zip) and read all the >> Readme & License files, just to see if we can redistribute them. I'll >> leave that to someone with more free time. :-) > > Be careful of what? > > Generally speaking, people only really care when they think there is > money involved. What money *could* be involved here?
Careful, as in there seems to be a company out there that purchased the IP from AST Research. I don't want to get a C&D letter from them, or engage in anything that involves a legal defense. We just don't have the resources to do anything against it. Yes, companies don't tend to care unless there's money involved. But in the case of trademark law, if you fail to defend attempted mis-use of a trademark that you own, you automatically lose it. So companies tend to police trademarks pretty aggressively. I'd rather err on the conservative side here, and not mix the AST Research driver archives with the FreeDOS Project archives. > I'd put the drivers up on a website and let folks know they existed. > The website would make it clear the drivers were archived there as a > service for folks who happened to have the hardware, and were offered > free of charge to those who could use them. I'd state that I was > doing so because the manufacturers were out of business and the > drivers could not be found elsewhere, and offer to take them down if > someone who could demonstrate they were the rights holder objected. I > would be rather surprised if any such rights holder came forward and > complained. It's a good idea. But I'll let someone else take that project. :-) -jh ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
