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List:       kde-artists
Subject:    K-ARTIST:Re: [Kopete-devel] plugin icons in Kopete -- trademark/copyright issue?
From:       Nick Betcher <nbetcher () kde ! org>
Date:       2003-02-16 8:24:40
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> Currently Kopete is using icons that are presumably copyrighted and
> trademarked by AOL, Microsoft and ICQ.  Despite this being a common

AFAIK the ICQ icons aren't copyrighted (they're not the AOL ones, even though 
they are familiar).

> practice in OSS IM applications, I am dubious of its legality -- unless
> there is somewhere a license for these things that I am unaware of.

Again, AFAIK there is no license that I have come across explicitly denying 
the use of icons from a certain program. Granted "The Running Man" *is* 
copyrighted, the icon itself is probably not.

> (1) policy - We currently do at least some basic auditing for code
> ownership and licenses in KDE -- we should probably do the same for artwork
> and such. It's probably a good idea to say before every (major) release to
> have someone spend a couple of hours to glance at icons and art that are in
> KDE and make sure that they're not obviously owned by someone else.

I agree with this and I think it would be a good policy to hold. Basically 
this is an unofficial rule that needs to be turned official.

> (2) artists - This means replacing a few of the icons in Kopete assuming
> that it is decided that these should go.  Any volunteers?

Unfortunately there are more programs than there are artists to draw for. It 
would be quite nice if we could get *talented* artists to develop replacement 
icons, but we're talking about around 60-80 different icons (find 
kdenonbeta/kopete/protocols -name "*.png" | wc -l) to be replaced. A couple 
people have attempted to replace certain sets and came up with poor results.

I completey agree with Scott, but the only option if we want to comply with 
United States and International law would be to remove all icons from Kopete 
and slowly watch poor replacements leak in (unless we can get a couple 
full-time people to devote a week or so on it).

The best idea at this point would be to actually research which icons are and 
aren't copyrighted and ask the owners of the non-copyrighted ones if we could 
use them. I will start this later today (it's 2:30am here, time to go to bed) 
when I wake up.

Ideas? Comments?
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