Re: About package with potential legal risk

[Thomas Goirand <thomas@goirand.fr>]

Jonathan Wiltshire wrote:

On Tue, Jun 08, 2010 at 10:54:06PM +0800, Liang Guo wrote:
  

I'm packaging a software openfetion[1], a instant messaging client with 
ChinaMobile fetion protocol support. Openfetion includes some images or 
pictures which are copied from ChinaMobile Fetion client, but this has not 
noticed in any form in openfetion. Should I remove these files or not ?
    

Unless you can be sure you (and Debian) have a license to redistribute
these images, they should be removed from the package and replaced if
possible.
  

If I may add: if you aren't a very good with drawing yourself, you might
find loads of such images in some other open source projects that you could
use as a replacement (do I need to mention any name of such an IM client?).
That's not a perfect way as something matching a bit the original would be
cool, but at least it's a fast way to solve your issue. Do not forget as
well that these icons will use the type of license of the project that you
will pickup, and this shall be documented in debian/copyright.

Thomas