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

Wed Nov 9 23:37:01 CET 2011

Le mercredi 09 novembre 2011 à 21:40 +0100, Florian Hubold a écrit :
+> 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?
+
+Well, I think we said we would place packages with various problem
+related to the law, and that could be patent or something else. 
+"
+        stuff we think we can redistribute, but that may have some
+        patent issues or other restrictions in other countries
+"
+
+The whole point is what is exactly "patent issue". 
+
+One definition would be "someone found a patent related, that is
+currently valid". That's one possibility.
+
+Another one would be "we have heard of a significant problem with
+something", and that would be my position ( which is annoying, because
+that's not a real good set of criteria to decide, and that just lack
+precisions, too fuzzy ). 
+
+On one hand, video codecs are a patent minefield ( mp3 story 10 years
+ago, the story of the mpeg la patent pool bac in february this year, etc
+). 
+
+On the other hand, interfaces didn't see much patents attack, from what
+I know ( besides the whole samsung/apple case, but that's maybe more
+subtle as that's "design patent", which is different from a software
+patent ). But maybe I am wrong on that point, and indeed, not having
+issues now doesn't mean we are safe later.
+
+One example that was often given is the progress bar
+( http://badpatents.blogspot.com/2011/05/progress-bar.html ) and
+despites it being expired now, no one ever did anything for that ( at
+least, from what I know ).
+
+Another example could be java ( Oracle vs Google case ), but the case is
+more complex since Oracle own Java, and so the risk is quite low.
+
+I think we can agree that we should not place everything in tainted, or
+that would just mean everybody will use and have tainted and that it
+will be mirrored everywhere, thus making the distinction useless ( and I
+personally still think that's not useful for now ).
+
+> > 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.
+
+Maybe the problem is somewhere else, like a icon of windows, stuff like
+that. Hence the question.
+
+-- 
+Michael Scherer
+
+