Re: [Flightgear-devel] Logos and licensing

[Heiko S. <aei...@ya...>]

Hi,

> That is one of the rare instances where
> we have been able, as a community, to figure out what we can
> or can't do legally and apply the reasoning consistently.

Exactly that's what I want to know in this case. 
 
> There's a general "we should avoid
> litigation" vibe here, but part of avoiding litigation is
> being smart and understanding our rights as software
> developers. It's quite frustrating because I don't think we
> are consistently achieving being smart and understanding our
> rights as a community, and we have been blundering along as
> a result.

Agree. 

> 
> Nothing, except when the discussion breaks down because no
> one really knows what OUR rights are.
> 
> We need to be working toward achieving concrete solutions
> on these problems, figuring out how we handle these issues
> as a community when they arise, and also working to minimize
> the threat of litigation while still maximizing the
> usefulness and realism of our program. I've made proposals
> in the past based on my understanding of copyright law and
> the Lanham Act. For instance, there is no reason why we
> shouldn't have a prominent disclaimer saying FlightGear is
> not associated or endorsed by any companies possibly
> represented in the program, either in the base distribution
> or through add-ons. There is no reason why there is no
> umbrella copyright notice anywhere within the executable
> file, except some people seem to think there is no copyright
> on GPL software - but then what does the GPL protect?
> 

So the question is: what are our Rights? What are we allowed to do? What not?
I'm still surprised that our project we don't have a laywer like other OpenSource Projects like Blender etc.
> 
> So why not make it easier on ourselves if someone whose
> livery is in our database takes umbrage?
> 
> I'm just very frustrated, I'm still going to use the
> software, I'm probably still going to contribute to the
> scenery database because that is a very small pool of
> developers all of whom seem to understand what the legal
> limits are in that area, but I've got better things to do
> than to not get anywhere arguing about the law on this
> list.

Well, until now you didn't say much about in this topic here. But as I can see, you are the one in the whole Project who does understand much more of laws and legal issues than anyone others here.

Heiko