On Thu, 4 Dec 2003, Anahata wrote: > > but what's more problematic is how he tries to > > re-brand > > One legal nightmare I can envisage is trademarking his name for the > product. I'm not sure if the GPL says anything about that... > If Luxuriousity Office gets a name for itself, Open Office > might be perceived as a derivative "clone". (Actually it says "Open > Office" all over his web site at the moment) I think this is an interesting one. The xiph.org guys probably know a lot about this since all the ogg stuff is licenced as "patent-free multimedia". By saying that they probably have a legal course of action if someone takes all the vorbis code and trys to patent the "new mp5 enhanced audio codec", or something like that. I know ogg stuff has a BSD licence. > > > or attempts to make it look like his company has written the > > software > Doesn't seem so from the web site: > " Today, programmers from around the world collaborate on the project > and it has made this program one of the most popular audio editing > programs in history." > > " Luxuriousity is pleased to be a community distributor for this program > and can offer it to you for a price that barely covers the manufacturing > costs and the limited support. The team of developers currently working > on this program have asked Luxuriousity to have our customers pass on > their ideas on how this program can be enhanced"... > > They may or may not have done that, of course... And that's what's really interesting. He is giving props to the developers, just not very obviously. If he has set up a legit business in whatever country he resides in, he must be aware of the licencing issues to make it worth his time. It will be interesting to see the tech support questions he gets when his re-branded apps don't meet some user's expectations. This reminds me of a friend's mother who clicked on one of those "speed up your internet! click here" ad banners and for her money, recieved a web site that compares prices of things to buy, all on one web page -- thus speeding up her internet by giving information from many places in one place, so she has to spend less time shopping! Brilliant scam. -lee
