[Gfoss] OT: zotero lawsuit

[Paolo Cavallini]

Non riguarda direttamente GFOSS, ma mi pare un'analogia pericolosa:
un'azienda pare abbia citato i produttori di sw libero (fortunatamente
un'universita' americana, che e' in grado di difendersi efficacemente)
per aver scritto software che poteva usare file di configurazione della
loro applicazione. Sarebbe come se, ad es., qgis potesse usare i file di
config di mapinfo, per produrre mappe dall'aspetto simile.
A me pare che il concetto di proprieta' intellettuale stia derivando
verso lidi abbastanza assurdi.
Salutoni.
pc

-------- Messaggio Originale  --------

I imagine many here have seen that Reuters (which I guess recently
bought Thomson, which had previously bought ISI, which had even
farther back bought Niles!) is suing George Mason University for
Zotero's (now removed) ability to read Endnote style files. My take is
here ...

<http://community.muohio.edu/blogs/darcusb/archives/2008/09/27/lawsuit>

... but you can Google for other good information.

I really don't think this suit has any chance of prevailing, but if it
did, the implications would be really bad, and impact far more widely
than Zotero. As I've said elsewhere, what Reuters will be effectively
claiming if they win is that ALL Endnote style files are their
property! As far as I'm concerned, this would be no different than if
Sun claimed that all OOo template files I produced were their
property.

I'd urge people to talk to their university library people about this
(I've already done so with my library dean), and see if they might
urge Reuters to drop this ridiculous suit.

Bruce
-- 
Paolo Cavallini, see: * http://www.faunalia.it/pc *