On Monday 08 October 2007 17:43, Randall R Schulz wrote:
Well, I am sure you read the disclaimer at
Why so wimpy?
It says "... might infringe ..."
IANAL. But let me put it this way: If the upstream authors of freetype were so sure about themselves, would they disable it already in their sources? If they are not so sure, why would we?
Until and unless the legal question is raised and settled in some plaintiff's favor, there's very little real risk to anybody. The worst that could happen is a cease-and-desist request.
...plus a lawsuit for damages. Creative lawyers might be tempted to multiply some random per-user amount of damage with the overall user base worldwide. That kind of thing easily can add up to tens of millions (or more). And until all that is settled, a Damocles sword of some phantastizillions might be hanging over us. Even if the lawsuit comes out to naught - after several years, like usual. Now why would we want that? That workaround with a hint page how to re-enable that feature (on a web site we cannot be held responsible for) might not be an ideal solution, but at least it puts the company that pays us full-time SuSE/Novell developers not at that kind of risk. Just my 0.02€. Kind regards -- Stefan Hundhammer <sh@suse.de> Penguin by conviction. YaST2 Development SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) Nürnberg, Germany -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org