On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 08:20:24AM -0400, Michael B. Trausch wrote:
<snip>
(Another aside: The Foundation can, at its discretion, create an official "layout" for the installer CD and then Copyright that layout, such that nobody else can use it. While it's possible, it can effectively "cramp" the software and innovation surrounding it, and it's not advisable. Others then must choose different "layouts" for their installers of their derived works, and this would require heavy modifications to installers and the like to find files in new locations.)
I call BS. The Lotus 1-2-3 fiasco and the Apple vs. MS suit are the two things that come immediately to mind as legal precedence. You can't copyright a "layout" (read: look and feel, menu structure, screen order, etc.). If you are referring to directory layout on the disk itself, I think you will have a VERY hard time trying to argue that it's copyrightable -- since layout is effectively the command-line look-and-feel for a given disk. You don't have to look far for proof on that, either; moving between various *ix distros, it's easy to get lost when one distro stores its files in a different place from where you're expecting.
If you can show me legal precedence for your statements, I'll be happy to reconsider my stance. I assume if you're making these claims, you have something to back them up, and I'm interested in hearing what your support is.
<snip>
A little bit about Copyright Law, now. A developer holds copyright to the portions of the code that (s)he contributed to the project, and that is all. The group that is responsible for putting it together, then owns the copyright on the layout, and so forth. So, if releases are the Foundation's job, then whether they claim their Copyright or not, it is, in fact, their Copyright. If someone other then the Foundation packages it for the ReactOS web site, then *THEY* hold the Copyright, and they can therefore claim that they are "the" Copyright holder for the Official Distribution of the ReactOS project.
Again, I'm going to call BS. You don't get copyright on an aggregation of work. If I went and copied all the articles (and ONLY the articles) out of a newspaper that ran only syndicated stories, the real copyright owners would have to come after me -- the newspaper could not. The only way the paper could come after me is if I accidentally copied content that (1) one of their writers wrote as a "work for hire," and that the paper holds the copyright to, or (2) I inadvertently copied one of their trade/service marks, implying their endorsement of the copied content when no such endorsement exists.
<snip>
I'm not a lawyer. If you can show me something in copyright law (and, to be clean, I'm talking US copyright law) that proves me wrong, I'll be happy to either adjust my argument or, if I'm outright wrong, eat my words. However, I have spent some quality time with title 17 (looking for loopholes), and I'm pretty confident that I'm on-target.
Cheers,
-- Travis
Legal precedence (1-2-3, Apple vs. MS): http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/6805/articles/int-prop/software-copyright.html
Title 17 US Copyright Law http://www.copyright.gov/title17/
__________________________________ Discover Yahoo! Get on-the-go sports scores, stock quotes, news and more. Check it out! http://discover.yahoo.com/mobile.html