1) No one who was "just following orders" was tried at Nuremberg. Only those "in charge" were tried.
2) Corporations are not "taking orders". Trademark laws require you to defend your trademark or you lose it. Imagine if you started selling a soft drink in a red can that was labeled Coke. People would definitely be confused (not everyone, hopefully, but many). If your soft drink didn't taste like Coke, or even worse, tasted downright bad, people would switch to Pepsi or something.
Furthermore, Tatu Ylonen seems to be a fair and decent sort of person. He didn't try to enforce his trademark until he started getting tons of annoying email and support calls from people who didn't realize they were using OpenSSH.
I think the reason he waited so long was more out of good will than anything else. Judging from his statement that he had "recently" began receiving emails and support calls from many confused (and as far as I'm concerned, downright stupid) people who couldn't tell the difference. My guess is that he didn't mind the OpenSSH project until people started calling him to complain about some bug or other in OpenSSH.
Knowing the way IT managers are, they probably yelled all sorts of things like "lawsuit" and "I'll never use your product again!" as a result of some minor flaw in OpenSSH.
While i can certainly understand that, i'm not sure we should be using laws to try and fix peoples' utter stupidity...
Well, that's the whole point of Trademark law. It's to protect a business from stupid consumers. Trademark is about the only IP law that I consider to be enforced properly.
My one objection to this is the obvious: isn't it a little late to start complaining?
Yeah. However, judging from what he said in his letter, I think the only reason he's doing this is the massive amount of support calls and emails he has started receiving from confused people. Of course, he'll be flamed up one side and down the other by many here on/. So it goes.
Nothing Apple produces deserves to fall under the 'BSD' category.
Especially since this isn't even really *about* MOSX. Whatever.
Why doesn't/. have a "Free Software Personality" category? That way, when Alan Cox drinks a glass of orange juice in the morning, we'll have an appropriate topic to place the story under.
Allow me to spew my NeXT worship here and say that the "Services" menu, acting like a GUI version of a pipe, made for quite a powerful tool. Anyone who has used MOSX know if something like this is included? T'would be cool.
Well, being a NeXT-ish kinda guy, I think I'd have to take exception with that one...;-)
and I would sure as heck try to protect it.
Well, sure. But what does that mean? I mean, I could understand them trying to keep people from distributing the (proprietary portions of the) MOSX code; but trying to squash somebody using similar visual ideas? To me, it's kind of like designing an advertisement and then suing anyone who uses the same fonts and colors in a community newsletter.
Some of this has to do with purpose: the purpose of the advertisement is to advertise a product. After fulfilling that function, why would the company who paid for the advertisement care if someone else used a similar color scheme and layout for something else? For example, I wouldn't think the Dairy Farmers Association of America would really be upset by the "got root?" t-shirts over at ThinkGeek.
Similarly, the purpose of the GUI is to interface with the OS. Once it has fulfilled that function, what would they care what other people did with the basic ideas (colors, transparency effects, etc.) Of course, I could be wrong; but it still wouldn't make sense to me.
By having others take it like that, it's not just blatantly copying their work, it's showing off Apple's cool interface before they release it (outside of the beta) on their own time.
This actually is a point that I hadn't thought of. I'm not sure I understand how this would really make much difference, but it's a thought.
And for your curiousity, I am an avid Mac user
Great! BTW, y'oughta take the time to learn Objective C and OpenStep...erm...I mean Cocoa. The community needs some attention from the Mac crowd.
Ah, but I can easily imagine situations where someone writes a riff or something that is very close to something else without having even heard the original. I don't know if that happened with the Vanilla Ice thing or not; but it's a pretty simple little idea, so it wouldn't be surprising. It just doesn't seem right that something like this could make it through a court case. I mean, if this were taken to its logical conclusion nothing would be safe from litigation.
Of course, the Aqua thing is obviously an attempt to imitate the original. I'm not really sure I see much wrong with that, either. However, Apple has sued people for making products with transparent colored plastic cases. How far could such things go? Could Apple sue someone for using their particular shade of blue?
But just as a particular type of container can be trademarked (think Coke glass bottle) or even a certain font and color combination (think Nivea cream),
This is, in fact, what I'm arguing against. If this kind of idea holds, most art and music is in violation.
Or the Unisys patent who waited for a really long time until GIF became an industry standard and then tried to litigate and were...uhh...NOT laughed out of court.
But when trademarks are involved, if you don't enforce them, you loose them.
I don't see how this has anything to do with trademark unless they're using the Apple logo itself (which they might be doing).
It would be rather sad if Microsoft could invoke Apple's leniency towards skins developpers to jusitfy ripping Aqua for Whistler.
They aren't going to do that. They're going to stick with their look. But, they are using transparency. Perhaps Apple can sue the hell out of them for the idea of partially transparent windows.
Silly question. The answer: Yes. Copyright law as it refers to music is well defined. Perhaps you've forgotten (thankfully) Vanilla Ice "borrowing" the bass line from Queen/David Bowie's "Under Pressure". Mr. Ice claimed there was a sixteenth note difference. Mr. Ice lost his shirt.
And are you aware that almost every piece of music in Western history employs one of a few different modal or tonal progressions? If tonal, it will nearly always be some variation on a tonic-subdominant-dominant progression; if modal, it will involve one of two or three patterns.
These stylistic elements are very closely related to the Apple case, actually. For example, there are things that define the MOSX "look" to a viewer (mostly color scheme and patterns that suggest particular kinds of light diffusion). These are just general stylistic traits. They cannot be copyrighted, patented, or trademarked as far as I'm concerned.
Of course, the use of a similar bass line or harmonic progression is so unavoidable as to make for a pointless suit. But try to get a judge to understand this.
I don't think this applies. Just from what they say, it seems to be decorative ornamentation of a product for which one drawing is submitted. So, the color scheme and use of translucent buttons wouldn't seem to fit. Now, of course, if they use the Apple *logo* in their skin (as some people *have* done), then this is a Trademark violation.
This is a simple rule of Intellectual property: if you don't enforce your patents, they become invalid.
This is only true of Trademark violations. Patent and Copyright violations can be pursued whether previous incidents have been pursued or not. Also, this doesn't look like a patent case to me. But you're dead on about changing laws rather than changing people.
Yep, that's right, I just click View Source, and copy and paste the html, changing nothing but the content.
That's not "look and feel"; that's copyright because you have actually used his HTML. The case with Apple would be more like you borrowing his color scheme.
Apple pioneered the GUI
No, they didn't. The good folks at XEROX PARC pioneered the GUI.
That is why we have law's to prevent this.
We don't have any laws concerning "look and feel." We have laws for Copyright, Patent, and Trademark protection. "Look and feel" doesn't fall under any of these unless you trademark every element of the way a GUI looks (colors, arrangement of pixels, etc).
You open-source zealots can be raving lunatics sometimes. Not everything is free for the taking.
Slashdot Mirror
But they aren't getting any business from it. Only support calls and emails from confused (and angry, perhaps) OpenSSH users.
And plus, he states that he has been asking for some time now.
2) Corporations are not "taking orders". Trademark laws require you to defend your trademark or you lose it. Imagine if you started selling a soft drink in a red can that was labeled Coke. People would definitely be confused (not everyone, hopefully, but many). If your soft drink didn't taste like Coke, or even worse, tasted downright bad, people would switch to Pepsi or something.
Furthermore, Tatu Ylonen seems to be a fair and decent sort of person. He didn't try to enforce his trademark until he started getting tons of annoying email and support calls from people who didn't realize they were using OpenSSH.
Knowing the way IT managers are, they probably yelled all sorts of things like "lawsuit" and "I'll never use your product again!" as a result of some minor flaw in OpenSSH.
Uh, this has NOTHING to do with the license. This is TRADEMARK. They're different.
Well, that's the whole point of Trademark law. It's to protect a business from stupid consumers. Trademark is about the only IP law that I consider to be enforced properly.
Yeah. However, judging from what he said in his letter, I think the only reason he's doing this is the massive amount of support calls and emails he has started receiving from confused people. Of course, he'll be flamed up one side and down the other by many here on /. So it goes.
Man, this is an awesome idea. Has someone done this already, or did you come up with it?
Uh, I think this was meant to be sarcasm.
Especially since this isn't even really *about* MOSX. Whatever.
Why doesn't /. have a "Free Software Personality" category? That way, when Alan Cox drinks a glass of orange juice in the morning, we'll have an appropriate topic to place the story under.
Allow me to spew my NeXT worship here and say that the "Services" menu, acting like a GUI version of a pipe, made for quite a powerful tool. Anyone who has used MOSX know if something like this is included? T'would be cool.
Granted.
and quite beautiful,
Well, being a NeXT-ish kinda guy, I think I'd have to take exception with that one... ;-)
and I would sure as heck try to protect it.
Well, sure. But what does that mean? I mean, I could understand them trying to keep people from distributing the (proprietary portions of the) MOSX code; but trying to squash somebody using similar visual ideas? To me, it's kind of like designing an advertisement and then suing anyone who uses the same fonts and colors in a community newsletter.
Some of this has to do with purpose: the purpose of the advertisement is to advertise a product. After fulfilling that function, why would the company who paid for the advertisement care if someone else used a similar color scheme and layout for something else? For example, I wouldn't think the Dairy Farmers Association of America would really be upset by the "got root?" t-shirts over at ThinkGeek.
Similarly, the purpose of the GUI is to interface with the OS. Once it has fulfilled that function, what would they care what other people did with the basic ideas (colors, transparency effects, etc.) Of course, I could be wrong; but it still wouldn't make sense to me.
By having others take it like that, it's not just blatantly copying their work, it's showing off Apple's cool interface before they release it (outside of the beta) on their own time.
This actually is a point that I hadn't thought of. I'm not sure I understand how this would really make much difference, but it's a thought.
And for your curiousity, I am an avid Mac user
Great! BTW, y'oughta take the time to learn Objective C and OpenStep...erm...I mean Cocoa. The community needs some attention from the Mac crowd.
Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking.
Of course, the Aqua thing is obviously an attempt to imitate the original. I'm not really sure I see much wrong with that, either. However, Apple has sued people for making products with transparent colored plastic cases. How far could such things go? Could Apple sue someone for using their particular shade of blue?
Yeah. Or a bunch of pinko liberal Democrats.
That was baaaaad. But funny, nonetheless.
This is, in fact, what I'm arguing against. If this kind of idea holds, most art and music is in violation.
Or the Unisys patent who waited for a really long time until GIF became an industry standard and then tried to litigate and were...uhh...NOT laughed out of court.
I don't see how this has anything to do with trademark unless they're using the Apple logo itself (which they might be doing).
It would be rather sad if Microsoft could invoke Apple's leniency towards skins developpers to jusitfy ripping Aqua for Whistler.
They aren't going to do that. They're going to stick with their look. But, they are using transparency. Perhaps Apple can sue the hell out of them for the idea of partially transparent windows.
And are you aware that almost every piece of music in Western history employs one of a few different modal or tonal progressions? If tonal, it will nearly always be some variation on a tonic-subdominant-dominant progression; if modal, it will involve one of two or three patterns.
These stylistic elements are very closely related to the Apple case, actually. For example, there are things that define the MOSX "look" to a viewer (mostly color scheme and patterns that suggest particular kinds of light diffusion). These are just general stylistic traits. They cannot be copyrighted, patented, or trademarked as far as I'm concerned.
Of course, the use of a similar bass line or harmonic progression is so unavoidable as to make for a pointless suit. But try to get a judge to understand this.
I don't think this applies. Just from what they say, it seems to be decorative ornamentation of a product for which one drawing is submitted. So, the color scheme and use of translucent buttons wouldn't seem to fit. Now, of course, if they use the Apple *logo* in their skin (as some people *have* done), then this is a Trademark violation.
This is only true of Trademark violations. Patent and Copyright violations can be pursued whether previous incidents have been pursued or not. Also, this doesn't look like a patent case to me. But you're dead on about changing laws rather than changing people.
That's not "look and feel"; that's copyright because you have actually used his HTML. The case with Apple would be more like you borrowing his color scheme.
Apple pioneered the GUI
No, they didn't. The good folks at XEROX PARC pioneered the GUI.
That is why we have law's to prevent this.
We don't have any laws concerning "look and feel." We have laws for Copyright, Patent, and Trademark protection. "Look and feel" doesn't fall under any of these unless you trademark every element of the way a GUI looks (colors, arrangement of pixels, etc).
You open-source zealots can be raving lunatics sometimes. Not everything is free for the taking.
You mean like color schemes?
One can only hope that they offer a "NeXT" option.