[ros-dev] Re: New OS built on ReactOS and WinuxOS technology!

[Quandary]

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/



		
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