nazgul@apollo.uucp (Kee Hinckley) (10/10/87)
I just had an interesting conversation with a friend who is thinking of
selling some HyperCard stacks. He called Apple to ask them about the
possibility of using any of the pictures in the Art Ideas or Stack Ideas
stacks and they told him that those images may NOT be used in commercial
software. Apparently Apple contracted them out to a third party and that
was part of the agreement. They were not sure whether or not anything in
the Help stack could be used. It is okay to use the icons though (that was
nice of them).
This is all very weird. In the first place I can't sell a stack to someone
who doesn't already have HyperCard, in which case they already have the
images that I'm using. In the second I seem to remember that Danny Goodman's
HyperCard book claims that although I can't use a third-party font in a
field without licensing it (since I would then have to include the font as
a resource) I *can* use that same font in a painted image. Is this true?
And if so, how is it different from using an image somewhere? And finally,
if I can't use an image from HyperCard in my program (or a font in a painted
image) then is it legal for me to use either of them in my documentation?
After all there isn't much difference between the documentation and my
HyperCard program. They are both for sale, and they both can easily have the
images lifted from them and used for other things (scanners are getting real
cheap).
Does anyone have a definitive answer on all of this? (What? A definitive
answer from USENET?) This isn't the kind of thing you want to find out only
when you get a call from someone's angry lawyer.
-nazgul
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I'm not sure which upsets me more; that people are so unwilling to accept responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate everyone else's.