[OPEN-ILS-DOCUMENTATION] ***SPAM*** Re: PDF icon: licensing concern & fix

[Tony Sebro]

On 05/17/2012 04:48 PM, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote:
> Dan,
>
> Dan Scott wrote at 00:13 (EDT):
>> On Tue, May 08, 2012 at 09:35:31AM -0400, Dan Scott wrote:
>>> For what it's worth, the PDF icon at
>>> http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/KDE/kdeartwork/IconThemes/primary/scalable/mimetypes/application-pdf.svgz?view=log
>>> is also licensed under the LGPL at
>>> http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/KDE/kdeartwork/IconThemes/primary/LICENSE?view=markup
>>> For the short term, in my (I am not a lawyer and this does not
>>> constitute legal advice) opinion, I think it should be fine to
>>> include the KDE icon in question as long as we reproduce the license
>>> and note the provenance of the icon.
>>> For example, keep the license file + icon in a separate directory and
>>> point to the location of the icon in the KDE repository, and perhaps
>>> note the exception in the docs themselves (which, come to think of
>>> it, should probably have a clear "licensing" section noting that the
>>> bulk of the content is licensed CC-BY-SA, with the exception of the
>>> LGPL icon; there may be more exceptions in the future - note there's
>>> a whole _other_ can of worms that arises due to our decision to
>>> license the documentation solely under the CC-BY-SA rather than under
>>> both the CC-BY-SA and the GPL, but we can and should discuss that
>>> separately).
> This all seems like good advice.
>
>>> We should of course always strive for perfect compliance, but if
>>> we're looking at this from a risk management perspective, I suspect
>>> it's not likely that the KDE project would go after our project
>>> aggressively.  If they believed we were not in compliance with their
>>> license and intent, they would most likely just send us a nice email.
> While I agree with that assessment, I think that making sure we've
> complied fully is important.
>
>> So... after talking with Bradley Kuhn of the Software Freedom
>> Conservancy, it seems that the best possible outcome would be if KDE
>> agreed to allow us to license the icon under the same CC-BY-SA 3.0
>> (Unported) license that our documentation uses.
> The reason I suggested that is that the LGPL requires that you carry a
> copy of the license and an offer for source at all times.  Specifically,
> this comes down mostly to printed works that include the icon.  I think
> that under LGPL, you have to consider printed works to be distributions
> in object form, which under LGPLv3§4(d)(0) must apply, and includes
> GPLv3§6 by reference, and it seems to me GPLv3§6(b) is the only section
> that works for compliance here of printed books.
>
> Yes, that's a mouthful of random complex LGPL/GPL section numbers.  And,
> that's why I really encouraged Dan to try to convince KDE to give an
> exception for use of the icon under CC-By-SA.
>
> The honest problem is, of course, that many projects rarely are this
> diligent in their desire to comply fully in these sorts of situations,
> so KDE doesn't actually receive this level of requests about their icons
> -- which surely appear in books.
>
> We could, however, come to some sort of fair use analysis of this
> situation and determine that the icon can be used -- at least in the
> USA -- without such strict compliance with the LGPL.  Tony, do you have
> any thoughts on that, given the facts Dan presented above?
>
I don't think this would qualify as fair use, because the value of this 
icon file is derived from its use of Adobe's trademark.    The original 
copyright holder, Adobe, has articulated its desire for this icon file 
(and the logo) to be associated with PDFs specifically created by Adobe 
software.  Using it to link to PDFs created by other sources could 
devalue the logo, which would by extension reduce the value of the icon 
file to Adobe.

Now, if Adobe has contributed this icon to other projects like KDE under 
LGPL, then I think it's fine to use it in the way that Bradley 
suggests.  But, you would need to include all of the necessary notices.

-- 
Tony Sebro, General Counsel, Software Freedom Conservancy
+1-212-461-3245 x11
tony at sfconservancy.org
www.sfconservancy.org