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From: owinebar@ezinfo.ucs.indiana.edu (Lynn Winebarger)
Subject: Re: GPL and "free" software
Date: 1999/05/01
Message-ID: <7gfi2j$7e8$1@flotsam.uits.indiana.edu>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 472954173
References: <7fibd5$jc7$1@news2.tor.accglobal.net>
 <DXqW2.244$jw4.22256@burlma1-snr2> <7gdln1$vna$1@jetsam.uits.indiana.edu>
 <372ADFBD.4F4C241B@doc.ic.ac.uk>
Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,gnu.misc.discuss
Date: 1999-05-01T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In article <372ADFBD.4F4C241B@doc.ic.ac.uk>,
Ed Avis  <epa98@doc.ic.ac.uk> wrote:
>Lynn Winebarger wrote:
>
>>Just think how MS (or other proprietary OS'es) could legally limit the
>>authorship of programs written to be run under their OS.
>
>As part of their consent decree settlment with the DoJ a few years
>ago, MS are not allowed to limit programs compiled with MS tools to
>run only on Windows.  Well, not using licence agreements, anyway.
>
   I wasn't referring to their compiler, but rather to the notion that
making dynamic calls to a library (and the kernel of an OS can be seen
in this way - heck, the Amiga's OS was explicitly written this way)
makes the caller a derivative work.  
   Whether or not MS could do it because of particular consent decrees
is beside the question.  The problem is that with this interpretation of
derivative work, a OS company would be legally in the right to restrict
the authorship of any program that made calls to the OS.  This might
trigger antitrust action, but in MS'es case they owned a huge chunk of
the OS market - other OS manufacturers wouldn't have this consideration
against them.  In any case, I don't think it's beneficial to try and
extend copyright to cover this.

Lynn