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finnschi

Member

Registered: 2016-07-11

Posts: 2

Legal advice - using XFCE in a Movie

Hi, I am a VFX artist (you know, the kind that makes explosions in movies).

I am now tasked with creating a Computer screen for a movie that involes hacking/darknet type of things, and as you probably all know, the usual fake-UI screens that you can see on tv shows like "NCIS" or many others are just wrong and that pisses me off.

So I want to do it right, since I am a *nix user myself and I looove xfce, I want to use xfce as a base for the hackers screen.
Now... my supervisor is unsure about the legal situation and I couldnt find anything usefull in the gpl Licence.

It would be super awesome if anyone could point me into the right direction, or give me a contact to whoever I have to ask for permission.

Also if you have fun gimmicks that I should include in the screen, let me know, I will for sure set the system time to 13:37 and maybe have a ping running to 4chan or something in the background ;-).

This is not for some student or home movie, this is for a rather big production.

Thank you so much in advance.

(also I had to ssh into my server using my phone to solve the captcha when signing up for this forum, I never had so much fun with a captcha in my life, awesome! Keep it up!)

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,006

Re: Legal advice - using XFCE in a Movie

I would watch the **** out of this movie!

I'm not sure what the answer is and I don't think we'll be able to provide you with an adequate answer. I asked at the #xfce-dev IRC channel and it was suggested that you might want to approach the Free Software Foundation for an answer. Another option would be to post this question directly to the xfce4-dev mailing list to see if someone has an answer for you.

You'll also need to keep in mind that Xfce is only a component of the desktop that you might be showing and that the other components (the distrobution, the non-Xfce apps, the web pages) that you want to display may have trademark issues that need to be investigated as well.

Good luck. Let us know what you find out.

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MountainDewManiac

Member

From: Where Mr. Bankruptcy is Prez

Registered: 2013-03-24

Posts: 1,115

Re: Legal advice - using XFCE in a Movie

I am now tasked with creating a Computer screen for a movie that involes hacking/darknet type of things, and as you probably all know, the usual fake-UI screens that you can see on tv shows like "NCIS" or many others are just wrong and that pisses me off.

I like to think that the real hardcore hackers use an OS/DE that is only available - or even known - to them. This is almost certainly not the case, lol - but I like to think it just the same.

Are you a creative kind of creator, one that can spin things out of whole cloth and make your audience believe it? If so, create (the appearance of) that special secret hacker OS. OTOH, if you're more like an accountant kind of creator (no offense intended either to you or to accountants) that must have a rigidly defined set of parameters to work within and, err, be handed a set of ingredients from which to cook your product... then, sure, it'd be neat to see Xfce be used for such a thing. The vast majority of your audience either won't notice or will assume that you made the OS/DE up, lol (yes, I am making an assumption here - but it doesn't seem like the type of movies that appeal only (or even primarily) to linux users become "rather big productions").

Now... my supervisor is unsure about the legal situation and I couldnt find anything usefull in the gpl Licence.

It would be super awesome if anyone could point me into the right direction, or give me a contact to whoever I have to ask for permission.

My guess is that it'd be fine, assuming that you make sure to give Xfce and the specific developers who created - and maintain, if the components have since been taken over by other people) whichever components that'll appear in the movie (the desktop environment / window manager, terminal, et cetera) mention by name in the movie's credits... and it is going to be a public domain and/or non-profit movie (especially one which will be released under its own GPL). Otherwise, if this is a for-profit project, offering to give said developers a small fee - say a quarter to half percent of the movie's gross - ought to lubricate things nicely. Oh, and you might want to ensure that the movie's credits mention that the components/Xfce have been released under the GPL when you list them in the credits. And it might be an accepted thing to add this sort of information to any electronic code, and since that's basically what the contents of DVDs are, adding it somewhere in the bits that make up the DVD release content would be nice.

But I really haven't the foggiest notion, lol. Why not ask the developers directly? You can find the Xfce development email list here:

https://mail.xfce.org/mailman/listinfo/

Also if you have fun gimmicks that I should include in the screen, let me know, I will for sure set the system time to 13:37 and maybe have a ping running to 4chan or something in the background ;-).

I've always liked that thing where a person could open a terminal window and telnet into... a server that I cannot remember right now... and view an ASCII art animation of Star Wars. That was awesome.

And if you could set up a scene where someone has a premonition about the Endless September that opened the door to (seemingly) every mouth-breather in the universe, so the person decides to blow up the entire AOL corporation and turn all of its properties literal smoking holes in the ground (you mentioned explosions?) - and then goes through with it... I would absolutely toss my budget out the window in order to buy tickets to your movie, because it'd be nice to see some justice on that one, even if it is just a dream (most real justice these days seems to be only present in one's dreams anyway).

Regards,
MDM

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MountainDewManiac

Member

From: Where Mr. Bankruptcy is Prez

Registered: 2013-03-24

Posts: 1,115

Re: Legal advice - using XFCE in a Movie

Oops, I just noticed your reply (and that you've already posted about the email list). My apologies for not checking for replies before I clicked on the post button.

You'll also need to keep in mind that Xfce is only a component of the desktop that you might be showing and that the other components (the distrobution, the non-Xfce apps, the web pages) that you want to display may have trademark issues that need to be investigated as well.

Good point. I'd suggest that the OP NOT use (X)unbuntu, lol. Mark Shuttleworth is probably getting tired of pouring out millions of dollars every year and might just want to make a dollar or two in 2017 .

Regards,
MDM

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Mountain Dew Maniac

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finnschi

Member

Registered: 2016-07-11

Posts: 2

Re: Legal advice - using XFCE in a Movie

Great answeres, yea I am the creative guy and I want to convince my accountants to let me build something that looks real, they will probably not let me put xfce in the credits (wich is sad if you ask me).

They (like almost all people) Don't care about Linux, but I do and if even one person in the theatre is thinking "Oh cool this is xfce" than its worth it for me. I just wanted to use backtrack/Kali with an open metasploit window but thats even mote complicated licence wise.  Maybe I am overthinking this, the screen is only going to be seen a few frames and I will probably end up building my own and just make it look like a real OS.

anyways the telnet-starwars thing is awesome I should at least include the hostname/adress of that telnet server somewhere. But I will probably not blow up AOL, I think they did that to themselves already ;-)

I was always thinking that the other GUIs you see on tv are custom built to look more "exiting" and that they where simply to stupid to use Linux. (99.999% of the industry is on OSX, just for ProRes, but thats a different topic...)

Can you even tell distros apart? I mean I am on CentOS right now (because thats what my VFX software supports) But my personal laptop runs Xubuntu and I couldnt tell wich is wich from just looking at the desktop and a browser window.

Btw, I will code the website seen myself so no worries there.

All this legal stuff is making me dizzy, Ill go back to making explosions.

Thank youvery much!

Last edited by finnschi (2016-07-12 04:37:48)

Sideburns

Member

From: Trinidad, CO

Registered: 2011-03-30

Posts: 467

Website

Re: Legal advice - using XFCE in a Movie

One thing you might want to consider is using Compiz and the desktop cube.  If you have the rotation rate right, it should look great on camera.  (I use this on my laptop as an example of what Linux can do that Windows can't.  Then, I point to the stickers that show that the laptop was built for Vista and hasn't had the hardware upgraded, meaning that it's not a matter of better hardware, it's simply better software.)  Another piece of eyecandy that you can use is having Shade Windows active, so that they roll up like an old fashioned window shade instead of minimizing.  Please keep us informed, and let us know if you need any more suggestions.

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MountainDewManiac

Member

From: Where Mr. Bankruptcy is Prez

Registered: 2013-03-24

Posts: 1,115

Re: Legal advice - using XFCE in a Movie

Another piece of eyecandy that you can use is having Shade Windows active, so that they roll up like an old fashioned window shade instead of minimizing.

I am not really interested in "eye-candy," but I'll admit that I chuckled the first time (or, possibly, two) that I saw a window that was being minimized fold itself into a "paper airplane" and "fly" off the screen. And many people seem to like the wobbly windows option (I think they wobble when a person moves a non-maximized one?).

Now that I think about it... IDK for sure, because I use Xfce's own WM, but there are probably several options in Compiz that would have many... Microsoft OS users thinking, "Aww, they just made that stuff up for the movie," if they saw them .

Regards,
MDM

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Sideburns

Member

From: Trinidad, CO

Registered: 2011-03-30

Posts: 467

Website

Re: Legal advice - using XFCE in a Movie

A few other things: if you're going to have a browser open, have it display a page you created yourself (or have the company's web-monkey do it) because that way there's no problem with copyright or trademark issues.  And, while I'm thinking of it, there's no obvious way to tell what the underlying distro is unless there's a visible logo on the screen.  (I use Fedora, and the icon for the Main Menu is the Fedora logo.)  If this is a real production company, they should have at least one IP lawyer available that you can this past to make sure everything's done correctly.

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