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Legal Impediments to Using F/OSS Screenshots?
Software Illustrated asks: "When publishing books on how to use Linux desktop software, the legal/IP review process to make sure we aren't infringing on the property rights of 3rd party sources should be easier than for books about proprietary/closed source software, right? Microsoft makes it easy as long as you comply with their guideline. I didn't think it would be necessary to get permission to publish a screenshot of, for instance, the GNOME gconf-editor. But that is just what our legal/IP review team is pursuing. Is this necessary?"
"If not, then how do you explain to a by-the-book contract administrator that the rules are different with GNOME? I find myself dealing with exactly this problem right now, resulting in a book ready for publication being put on hold. Is the solution here to get GNOME (and KDE for that matter) to publish their own permission guidelines ala Microsoft? Seems counterintuitive to the spirit of the F/OSS movement. But doing this sure would grease the skids for publishers. Has anyone else dealt with this issue?"
There's some informative discussion at the Wikimedia Commons.
Sorry, I read your question and suddenly started thinking about reviews. A book about computer software is an educational tool. Also covered under fair use.
You can't teach someone something without showing it to them right? Make your screenshots black and white too (it'll be cheaper anyways), unless of course you are writing a book about the gimp, but I digress. You should be ok to write a book with screenshots, free speech is a wonderful thing.
zosxavius photography
Their legal department doesn't seem to understand nor trust that concept.
-dave
http://millionnumbers.com/ - own the number of your dreams
I mean, it is their job to look for things that might get you into trouble, but this is taking things to the level of absurdity. It makes wearing a tinfoil hat look like locking your front door when you go out for the day.
Let's leave aside the improbability that who gives his source code to the world is very likely to come after you for taking a picture of the results. A lawyer, after all, is not paid to trust in human nature. But we still live in a country that has some remnant of first ammendman rights; people have been quoting copyrihted works for critical, educational and scholarly works forever. Unless the license restricts reviewing the work, as some commercial database licenses do, it is laughably paranoid to worry about this.
If you must, and the product is GPL, include a written offer to send the source code for a reasonable reproduction fee, and you're OK under the GPL (if posting on the web is too expensive). If BSD, then put BSD license at the end of the work and endnote any screenshots to point to it. You get the idea -- if the lawyers are worring that a screen shot is a form of redistributing the software, just comply with whatever the particular restrictions are for binary redistribution.
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Your quote of the GPL only serves to emphasize the dilemma. By declaring the output of GPL programs outside the scope of the GPL, means the copyright holders can choose to claim any restrictions they want on the program output.
Sounds like every OSS maintainer indeed may need to have some such declaration.
That said, it seems like screenshots and the like should fall under the category of fair use, not needing explicit permissions.
Anm
So, unless you're talking about trademark, there aren't any copyright issues in reproducing the output of GPLed programs.
Exactly. The GPL has absolutely no bearing on the output of the program, and introduces exactly zero issues.
Just because Apple uses GCC, that doesn't make OS X free, does it? That doesn't mean you get to copy their graphics for your book, does it? No, of course not, on both counts.
From the GPL, right up at the top, in paragraph 0:
The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output
from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work
based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the
Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.
Taking a screenshot is clearly "running" the program, so that is not
restricted. And clearly a screenshot (an image) is not a derived work
of the program, so that's fine too.
Only the most technically incompetant or clinically paranoid legal
team could have a problem with this.
I'm not saying that it would be a copyright problem; I'm just saying that the "output" clause of the GPL does not cause screenshots to be exempted.
Like a browser is a viewer for HTML'ed content, KDE/GTK+/GNOME applications are also viewers for the Themes. .The majority of KDE and GNOME themes are GPL'ed. I do not know of any non-GPL'ed GNOME Themes for a start. All the themes on Fedora are GPL'ed.
The GPL applies to the source and binaries of the Themes. However, in the same way that you can run GPL'ed applications on propriety platforms such as Solaris, because of the design of the theme system, can even be used by non-GPL'ed applications. In the same way, either the X11R6 Xserver display or the applications themselves are also viewers for fonts. All the fonts shipped with the X.org implentation of X11R6 can be freely used in screen shots and printing.
First, this is a question for a competant copyright lawyer. You should not base business decisions on the musings of /. posters. That said, I'll pitch in my two cents because I think it should spark something for you to do some research on.
You have pointed to a non-existant page at Microsoft, so reading the terms you referred to is not as easy as following the link. However, regardless of what these terms are, if I were in your shoes, I would first want to know: is Microsoft's claim of being able to set terms by which screenshots are used based on some law? If they have no grounding in law, then their terms are useless, no matter how "easy" they make it for publishers to acceed to their request. You make it sound like your publisher is simply letting Microsoft tell them how to run their business, by blindly accepting and working within the limits drawn up by Microsoft then using that (possibly bogus claim of power) as a means of framing the debate for copyright holders in the free software world.
Questioning Microsoft's power is critical to answering your question because if Microsoft's claims are based on nothing but their desire to control you and your publisher, then you'll find that there is nothing for the free software community to do. Hence, asking the free software community for screenshot licensing terms is a moot point.
The text of the GNU GPL is an excellent example of this point: in the GPL, the most commonly used free software license, you'll find the text that reads "Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope.". This is because the FSF put a lot of work into writing a license that is actually based on copyright law, enforcible around the world wherever there is a copyright regime (because, at the basic level at which the GPL is written to work, these copyright systems are quite similar). The FSF, and all GPL licensors, draw strength from working so closely to what copyright law actually gives copyright holders power to work with. Microsoft, on the other hand, claims powers in its licenses which I doubt they have the power to enforce, such as their claim of prohibitng you from using FrontPage (Microsoft's web page editor) to make webpages which disparage Microsoft.
I would also question the validity of Microsoft's screenshot licensing terms because I'd wonder if a screenshot is not simply the output of a process, something which the FSF claims is "legally impossible" for a copyright holder to control. The GPL has proven to be legally defensible (both because lawyers agree it is defensible and therefore encourage their clients not to bring suit based on the GPL, and in the few cases which have gone to court), hence I tend to trust the FSF's interpretation of copyright law.
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