[Mageia-dev] [RFC] move cairo-dock to tainted because of trademark/patent issues

Wed Nov 9 21:40:54 CET 2011

Am 09.11.2011 21:15, schrieb Michael Scherer:
+> Le mercredi 09 novembre 2011 à 14:14 +0100, Florian Hubold a écrit :
+>> Hi there,
+>>
+>> after updating cairo-dock and -plugins to the latest version,
+>> it has come to my attention that cairo-dock has been removed
+>> from Fedora due to patent issues, as can be seen here:
+>> http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/gitweb/?p=cairo-dock.git;a=blob;f=dead.package;h=2f21e743a00cfe3accc33b8d5c974f2572bcdfc5;hb=9e2eb0b9936f326a454f6104a81c6061a5528625
+>> I've found no further explanation about this so far.
+>>
+>> The corresponding patent (from Apple) should be this one:
+>> http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7,434,177.PN.&OS=PN/7,434,177&RS=PN/7,434,177
+>> IMHO this Apple patent should not have been issued because of prior art:
+>> http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Apple_Dock but currently it's effective and we need to
+>> respect it.
+> The base claim is indeed weak.
+>
+>> A related discussions about cairo-dock and trademarks of
+>> some of the included icons in cairo-dock-plugins can be seen here:
+>> http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/legal/2009-January/000505.html
+>> To be honest, i don't think this was appropriate as those icons
+>> clearly seem to come from the game pingus, which is FL/OSS.
+>>
+>> So i request cairo-dock and cairo-dock-plugins and cairo-dock-themes
+>> be moved to tainted. Any objections?
+> Yes, I do have one, I think we agreed that tainted was for enforced
+> patents, or those that would likely be enforced. While the definition is
+> fuzzy, I doubt that the patent will be enforced, mainly because it is
+> weak,
+>
+> Red Hat lawyers are right for a US company, but we are not in the same
+> position as Red Hat ( ie, we are not in the US, we are not a company
+> with several millions on the bank account and no one will ever attack us
+> because we are competing with them ).
+Wel, i don't understand this. Last time we talked about patents
+in the nonfree+tainted discussions, concensus seemed to be that
+even if patents don't apply here (europe), we need to respect them.
+So do we or don't we?
+
+IIUC you suggest that cairo-dock* stays where it is?
+> For the icons, what is the problem exactly, ie what icons are
+> copyrighted ?
+Only linked the ml thread for the icons for reference. It is not said
+which are trademarked (and more important by whom) i guess it could
+be seen as a derivated work to the original lemmings game from DMA design.
+But as the game pingus is existing, and has not been sued,
+i don't think they have a valid point there.
+