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Date:      Sun, 16 May 1999 13:49:09 +0100
From:      Dean Lombardo <dlombardo@excite.com>
To:        current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Nt source licenses...
Message-ID:  <373EBEC5.D8B1E0E0@excite.com>
References:  <Pine.BSF.3.96.990516123045.2241U-100000@haldjas.folklore.ee>

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Narvi wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 16 May 1999, Dean Lombardo wrote:
> 
> > Garance A Drosehn wrote:
> > >
> > > At 3:51 PM +0700 5/12/99, Ustimenko Semen wrote:
> > > > Are we going to get this license? I am interested in NTFS
> > > > source code a lot...
> > >
> > > I would be very careful about getting an NT source license if
> > > your intention is to write NTFS support for some other operating
> > > system.  Microsoft is not doing this licensing for the benefit of
> > > mankind, they are doing it to attract college-type users to
> > > sticking with WinNT over open-source unixes.
> > >
> > > The last thing we need is some code from WinNT which causes us
> > > to be sued by Microsoft...
> >
> > They can't sue - unless, of course, the code is copied verbatim (and
> 
> They most definately *CAN* sue. I don't think "can't sue" is something
> that applies to the US in any way.


OK - perhaps I should rephrase it - they *can* sue, but they are not
very likely to do so without good reason.   Do you really think that
someone at Microsoft is going to compare FreeBSD's (OpenBSD's / NetBSD's
/ Linux's / etc / etc) implementations of NTFS with their own, with the
only intention of discovering that some parts were derived from their
code?   Even if they did,  how would they prove it unless the code was
indeed identical to theirs?  It's an unwinnable war.

> But do we have the money to prove that?

And considering that we don't, it's even less likely.

Dean


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