Quote:
Originally Posted by chirulz
I am in aww of the greatness that is performed here at this site, but i was honestly wondering the difference between someone charging for this stuff and those who creating it asking for donations. don't get me wrong they deserve it, but i mean aren't they then infringing on microsoft and others? just an honest question. Again I'm against those who didnt help trying to profit, but just wondering the legal diferences?
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Obviously, if you created it in it's entirety, you can do whatever you want. The question is whether you are depriving a license owner of revenue which their license entitles them to and they haven't actively undermined. Nobody here is representing they made WM6, so you're not "stealing credit" (a form of compensation). Nobody here is representing that they are providing a WM6 license (obviously a direct violation). Nobody here is distributing copyrighted works in a form different than the same work is readily available to the general public (and that's the key for WM5/WM6 - it's freely available to end users as a PPC ROM from your carrier exactly as it's distributed here).
Nobody is requesting donations for providing another's copyrighted work in it's freely available form. When donations are requested, it's because there was some product seperately identifiable from any licensed work of another.
What we commonly see on e-bay and other sites, however, is people charging for someone else's product (obviously an infringement for non-freeware products)(sometimes people even represent the work as their own!). Because they are using another's work as a revenue generating enterprise (either through selling it unaltered or through it's integral nature to the product they are selling or integral nature to production of the produt they are selling) their usage is a "non personal use" and different licensing terms apply. Many of the products in the kitchen have specific licensing terms related to such commercial usage. WM5/WM6 and BuildOS are two such examples.