[License-discuss] Screenshots of Open Source SW

[Sebastian Hoffmann]

Dear license-discuss,
software and open source licensing is tightly concerned with copyright law of software.Another topic tightly concerned with copyright are images.So I was wondering how to handle screenshots of open source software.Most licenses do not explicitly cover this subject (i.e. LGPL, BSD).Indeed, I searched a lot for this topic but found no satisfactory answer.
I think, Wikipedia for instance treats screenshots in the meaning of "derived work", which is sometimes covered by OS licenses.As a result the screenshot has a remark (when you click on it), that it has the same license as the originating OS program.
Few countries could cover this by "fair use", but a lot of countries do not know "fair use" in their legal system.
However, magazines, scientific publications, web pages and books describing OS software often use screenshots,without using these explicit licensing remarks.(And in my humble opinion writing about open source software is not a bad thing.)
Companies producing commercial software usually have some condidtions published, under which screenshots are granted to be used (i.e. Microsoft).A lawyer would typically give you the advice, to ask the origiginator of a creation for permission.However, in the case of OS software, you would probably need the grant of all contributors, what is practically not possible.
The idea is just to give the users of (maybe even modified) screenshots of OS software some legal certainty.
As I was not able to find a satisfactory answer, I was wondering how some experts would think about this issue and its current status.
Best regards 		 	   		  
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