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

Thu Nov 10 05:43:31 CET 2011

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+On 11/09/2011 04:37 PM, Michael Scherer wrote:
+> 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.
+> 
+Take a look here:
+http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html
+
+and here:
+http://opensource.org/docs/osd
+
+
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