Justin Freeman: Notes Is Dead? No. Notes Continues To Deliver Real Solutions

April 9 2005

Justin writes of some good successes his firm has had with Notes solutions of late...

I've just posted a new success story on our www.agileware.net website and I am pretty proud of this project, Hazard Log for Royal Australian Navy using Lotus Notes/Domino. There is simply no other product on the market today that meet the requirements this project demanded
Link: Justin Freeman: Notes Is  Dead? No. Notes Continues To Deliver Real Solutions >

Ed Brill Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Lotus  Add/View Comments [10]

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  1. 1  Andy Steven www.uptime100.com.au | 4/10/2005 1:07:57 AM

    Very similar in look and feel to { Link } When I se very similar I mean exactly the same. Is there any copyright issues with that?

  1. 2  Justin Freeman http://blog.agileware.net | 4/10/2005 3:55:51 PM

    re: Andy.

    I think this will answer your question.

    { Link }

  1. 3  Andrew Tetlaw  | 4/10/2005 6:11:14 PM

    Not really Justin, on the plone.org site it says this:

    "Can I create my own product from scratch, and use the Plone icons, look and feel and general concepts and appearance?

    In general, no. We may allow you to re-use the icons and concepts if it's a non-commercial product though (personal web pages and such) - you just need to state the copyright on your page. However, if you are selling the product under your own name as a commercial product, you will definitely have to pay royalties. The Plone logo, the Plone icons, and the visual appearance and concepts of Plone are protected by worldwide copyright."

    { Link }

  1. 4  Justin Freeman http://blog.agileware | 4/10/2005 7:39:41 PM

    Andy, "if you are selling the product under your own name as a commercial product, you will definitely have to pay royalties", Agileware is not selling the product under our own name so this does not apply. I don't think there's much of a market in "Navy Hazard Logs" anyway :)

    As stated in the success story, Agileware was contracted by the client to develop a custom system using Lotus Notes. Our development included the customisation and inclusion of a GPL design component. This is not a violation of the GPL.

    As advocates of both Lotus Domino and open source software, we found that the combination of the two, in this case enabled us to deliver a solution that exceeded requirements.

  1. 5  Andrew Tetlaw  | 4/10/2005 7:51:21 PM

    Just be careful Justin, it's not uncommon for a product to be licensed under the GPL but exclude the visual design and reserve all rights to their visual design. For example id software released Quake the game but not the Quake graphics under an open source license.

    I get the feeling Plone have done this. Or at least consider the Plone app and the Plone visual design 2 seperate things.

    Note the plone site says even if you can use the visual elements freely you must still include a copyright notice.

    Don't mean to harp on about this and ignore your good work with the actual application you've created, only pointing out a possible sticky situation for you.

  1. 6  Justin Freeman http://blog.agileware | 4/10/2005 8:01:48 PM

    No worries. If ever want some custom software development, give us a call :)

  1. 7  Justin Freeman http://blog.agileware.net | 4/10/2005 8:06:04 PM

    Thanks Ed for posting a link to our story, we were all gob-smacked!

    I'd like to encourage all Lotus Notes/Domino developers out there to get loud in proclaiming their own success stories and telling the world how good Lotus Notes/Domino truly is.

  1. 8  Carl Tyler http://www.iminstant.com | 4/11/2005 9:32:25 AM

    You can't copyright look and feel. Just ask Apple and Lotus, both companies which had long expensive battles trying to fight the argument that you could.

  1. 9  Philip Storry http://www.not-so-rapid.com | 4/11/2005 6:14:20 PM

    Carl [8],

    A brief distraction - yes, you can't copyright look and feel. The general aesthetic of a program is proven in court to be open to duplication, for a variety of reasons.

    You can, however, legally copyright specific aesthetic components of the application.

    Example: Microsoft cannot copyright their menu structures, dialogue boxes etc. for Word. Not enforcably, anyway.

    But they could copyright the Word logo (in various resolutions and colour depths), the Word splash screen that's loaded on startup, and graphical elements in the Help -> About dialogue box etc.

    Copyright law gets tricky like that... :-)

    This could mean that you can re-use and redistribute the app, so long as you don't re-use and re-distribute the graphical elements. This seems to be (from scanning the comments) what's happened here...

  1. 10  Patrick Kwinten http://quintessens.wordpress.com | 1/23/2010 4:39:43 AM

    MS is dead

    { Link }