[LAD] Impro-Visor created on sourceforge

[Ralf Mardorf]

Thomas Vecchione wrote:
> Forgot to send to the list.
>
> On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 6:10 PM, Thomas Vecchione <seablaede at gmail.com 
> <mailto:seablaede at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 5:34 PM, Raymond Martin <laseray at gmail.com
>     <mailto:laseray at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>
>         Not at all. There is even evidence in the FSF documentation
>         somewhere exactly
>         about this point and they vehemently disagree with any
>         attitude like that. We
>         all know very well the situation of Emacs, Xemacs, and various
>         other forks.
>
>
>     The FSF is not the law.  I suggest you look up Trademark Law to
>     realize why you are wrong, and why you are subject to a lawsuit
>     for knowingly creating a product that is infringing on an already
>     existing trademark(Regeristered or Unregeristered would make a
>     small, but only small, difference in this case), and can easily be
>     confused as such.  In fact the case against forcing you to change
>     it is rather strong because not only is your product nearly
>     identical in name, it is nearly identical in function and can be
>     easily confused with the original.
>
>     Standard disclaimer of I am not a lawyer of course applies.
>
>            Seablade
>

I'm not interested to take sides, I only want to learn about the GPL.

Assumed that Miss B. forks a GPL'd project, as far as I understand the 
GPL, Miss R. is allowed to fork a project with a similar name, similar 
function, based on the open source code of Miss B. and if Miss B. had no 
time to open the source code, because she was in the manicure salon, but 
Miss B. accepted the GPL, e.g. a mailing list for manicure software can 
witness this, than Miss R. is allowed to decompile the software of Miss 
B.. Am I wrong?
If Miss B. would use GPL'd code and won't agree to the GPL, than Miss B. 
is violating the GPL, but Miss R. isn't allowed to decompile the 
software of Miss B., because of copyright laws. Am I wrong? But again, 
Miss B. accepted the GPL, but while the nail polish needs to dry, she 
wasn't able to distribute the source code, she only had time to 
distribute the binary. She wrote exactly this to the manicure developers 
mailing list, that's why Miss R. decided to decompile the code.

The situation is a little bit tricky and Miss R. is less liked by the 
manicure developers list, while Miss B. is liked by the list. And that's 
why little differences are easily overlooked.

Justizia should be blindfolded ;) and even take care of little differences.

Ralf