I notice that some of the icons, cursors and bitmaps used in the user of wine (for example, the 4 icons used in message boxes) look just like the windows ones. How can wine have them looking just like the windows ones and not violate microsoft copyright? Or are they copyright violations but WINE just hasnt been sued yet?
On Thu, 24 Jul 2003 13:42, Jonathan Wilson wrote:
I notice that some of the icons, cursors and bitmaps used in the user of wine (for example, the 4 icons used in message boxes) look just like the windows ones.
How can wine have them looking just like the windows ones and not violate microsoft copyright? Or are they copyright violations but WINE just hasnt been sued yet?
It depends on how closely the bitmaps mirror the Windows ones, as well as how closely the icon has become associated with the idea represented by the icon. For instance, the 16x16 folder icons used by Microsoft have probably become so closely identified with the idea that it would be legal to reuse them verbatim. This is even more so because there is such a limited range of possible expressions of the idea in such a small space.
On the other hand, the icons for the message boxes are probably not sufficiently associated with the idea, and being 32x32 icons there's a more significant range of possible expressions (four times the space). They should probably be redone if they are literal copies of the Microsoft ones.
It is one of the great ironies of copyright law that if a software company is too successful in promoting their user interface, they actually start to lose copyright protection for the function-oriented graphics used in that user interface.
In your case, in the cards there is a significant amount of protectable expression. However cards have been around for thousands of years, and in their modern European form for hundreds of years. This means you might well find some cards whose copyright has expired to scan in if you look hard enough, but you can't use the Microsoft ones because they clearly fall into the protectable category.
This is no doubt why playing cards tend to have lots of little fiddly decorations on the face cards - to increase the amount of protectable expression.
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Jonathan Wilson -
Troy Rollo