Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 10:22:57 EDT From: TM4525@aol.com To: davids@webmaster.com Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: GPL vs BSD Licence Message-ID: <13c.4dfe782.2eb3ac41@aol.com>
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In a message dated 10/28/04 9:16:02 PM Eastern Daylight Time, davids@webmaster.com writes: > But then, I'm not sure (and I mean it) if there can be any piece of > software which, if designed for e.g. Linux, can be written w/o using any > system headers, libraries or whatsoever. ------------------ I find it impossible for any reasonable person to believe that, by making its header files available an O/S vendor therefore owns the rights to anything that runs on, or interoperates with the O/S. So Microsoft owns Photoshop. And Netscape too. So why are they fighting? Its been fairly well established that Lawyers know a lot about law but not much about computing. You can't apply copyright law verbatim to an operating system, because unlike a written work, the operating systems entire purpose is to provide hooks for external applications and device drivers. Claiming that anything that works with it is a "derivative" is, quite simply, ridiculous. The GPL is a myth. It will never be tested because if it is, it will lose all of its teeth. Its much more useful in a speculative state.
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