Re: Gnometris copyright/trademarks



On Thursday 28 December 2006 16:13, Andreas Røsdal wrote:
> Gnometris has potential copyright/trademark problems, and is therefore not
> included in some Linux distributions, such as Fedora.
>
> I've created a bugreport here, with links to bugreports at Redhat:
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=390473
>
> - What are the specific copyright and trademark problems?

The first bug report you linked to has Havoc stating that all Tetris clones 
are illegal. That's a pretty broad and incredible claim. So, if he has some 
evidence to back up that statement, that would be nice to have.

The second bug report is correct that the "look and feel" or the rules of a 
particular game cannot be copyrighted to such an extent as to prevent someone 
from "reverse engineering" their own implementation. So we don't violate any 
copyright law.

IMO, RedHat is just using these reasons to remove a rather unsightly game from 
their GNOME distribution. We should make Gnometris prettier and more 
exciting. Then they'll put it back in.

> - What can be done to circumvent these problems, by making gnometris a
> more unique game, rather than yet another "tetris clone"?

"Tetris" is the trademark we are ostensibly violating. Though I don't think 
it's required, all we really can do is to rename Gnometris to something else.

-- 
Jason D. Clinton
Something clever goes on this line.

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