Talk:Cowsay

Character Trademark and Copyright

Fictional characters can be protected by copyright and trademark. This is an explanation that uses Disney characters. <https://info.legalzoom.com/article/legal-use-disney-characters>

Questionable Files

Some of the files used by cowsay's -f option appear to be questionable. I looked at all the files in the cows directory of the cowsay repostory and the following files were the ones I identified as questionable. All of the following charters are likely trademarked and copyrighted (however I have not verified that).

• beavis.zen.cow
  • <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beavis_and_Butt-Head>
  • Uses trademarked character name and character
• bud-frogs.cow
  • <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budweiser>
  • <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budweiser_Frogs>
  • Uses trademark and characters
• cheese.cow
  • <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_%26_Cheese>
  • Uses trademark character name and character
• ghostbusters.cow
  • <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostbusters>
  • Uses trademark and no ghost logo
• hellokitty.cow
  • <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hello_Kitty>
  • Uses trademark and character
• luke-koala.cow
  • <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luke_Skywalker>
  • Uses trademarked character name
• milk.cow
  • <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_%26_Cheese>
  • Uses trademark character name and character
• ren.cow
  • <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ren_%26_Stimpy_Show>
  • Uses trademark character name and character
• stimpy.cow
  • <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ren_%26_Stimpy_Show>
  • Uses trademark character name and character
• telebears.cow
  • <https://brand.berkeley.edu/uncategorized/telebears/>
  • Uses trademark
• vader-koala.cow
  • <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darth_Vader>
  • Uses trademark character name

Are these two fair use?

• moofasa.cow
  • <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mufasa#Mufasa>
• vader.cow
  • <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darth_Vader>

Repository

Guix uses this source code repository for cowsay. <https://github.com/tnalpgge/rank-amateur-cowsay.git>

The <https://github.com/tnalpgge/rank-amateur-cowsay> readme says:

> This is cowsay, imported directly from my ancient CVS repository

In that source code repository the questionable files can be seen in the cows directory.

Mitigation

Identify Fork

There may already be a fork of cowsay that removes these questionable files.

Submit Issue Upstream

It does not look like these questionable files are going to be fixed in <https://github.com/tnalpgge/rank-amateur-cowsay> as the CONTRIBUTING.md file says:

> Issues and pull requests ... will be ignored.

A pull request with a commit that removes the quesitonable files was submitted <https://github.com/tnalpgge/rank-amateur-cowsay/pull/4> and was closed without being merged.

The same pull request <https://github.com/cowsay-org/cowsay/pull/16> was made on a maintained cowsay repository <https://github.com/cowsay-org/cowsay>.

Patch When Packaging

When cowsay is being packaged for redistribution it could be patched to remove the questionable files.

Create Fork

cowsay could be forked and the fork could remove the questionable files.