GNU Hurd’s legal aspects can be discussed into two sections
as Copyright Trademark and Free Software Licenses. In the Free Software
movement GNU Hurd protects the term “Intellectual property” because, GNU
project is initiated with the aim of developing the software, and to promote
the creation of more ideas from the users. According to www.gnu.org, this has
been accomplished rather professionally, that if a technical person has a piece
of code or document to contribute, he ought to sign the legal copyright papers
from Free Software Foundation regarding copyright for his work. Thus, the GNU
project is still under development by the user-community, because of the
acceptance of this legal support of copyright. They still releases software
versions.
GNU software avoids legal difficulties, and other related
issues by referring to proprietary programs, accepting contributions and the
way it deals with trademark issues.
·
Referring to Proprietary Programs
If
you have a vague recollection of the internals of a UNIX program, this does not
absolutely mean you can’t write an imitation of it, but do try to organize the
imitation internally along different lines, because this is likely to make the
details of the UNIX version irrelevant and dissimilar to your results.
·
Accepting Contributions
User is able to add a piece of code to
the program by signing the legal papers of copyright given by the Free Software
Foundation related to the contribution. Even for a nontrivial contribution to a
program must sign legal papers to get a title to the program. This applies both
before the release of the program and afterwards. Legal papers is expected to
fix a bug in the software regarding significant change.
Actually,
Trademark is another way of referring to brands and brands can be protected by
registered trademark. Trademarks are an effective communication tool
especially for customers to find a software. Trademarks can convey intellectual and emotional
attributes, messages about a software or company, company’s reputation of products
and services. If such company wants to compete in the industry,
trademark helps to distinguish itself from the market. However, the GNU
Hurd official web site claims that there isn’t any trademark acknowledgments in
GNU software packages or documentation and they don’t allow any trademark and
they reason out as there isn’t any need for using trademark. So, GNU Hurd
doesn’t seem to have a registered trademark. This is why the GNU Hurd is
unrecognized in the industry. And this would be a prominent reason for the
drawback of the project as well.
The licenses for most software are designed to take
away users’ freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public
License is intended to guarantee users freedom to share and change free
software to make sure the software is free for all its users.
No comments:
Post a Comment