[olug] OT: more Hans goodness

[Adam Lassek]

It really doesn't matter what the developers, or IP lawyers think. Unless
your position is tested in court, the best you can do is speculate. It may
be very educated speculation, in some cases, but speculation nonetheless.

I've never thought about this before, but Bill's point about the definition
of a derivative work is interesting. This whole attitude in the Free
Software community that using so much as one line of GPL code infringes the
copyright of the whole almost certainly violates the spirit, if not the
letter, of copyright law. How would the Fair Use Doctrine apply in this
case? I don't think we have an answer to that.

On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 12:05 PM, Luke -Jr <luke at dashjr.org> wrote:

> On Thursday 10 July 2008, William Langford wrote:
> > Attempting to claim the ABI can't be reverse engineered is silly.
> > Hardware hackers have clean roomed lots of nasty stuff. If a company
> > would be interested in doing so is doubtful, however.
>
> You can't reverse engineer an ABI when an ABI does not even exist. If you
> reverse-engineer the "ABI" (internal symbols) for Linux 2.6.25, your
> resulting code will break in 2.6.25.1 because, not having an ABI, it has
> changed.
>
> > In terms of legality, what many (prominent or not) developers think
> > doesn't amount to a hill of beans.
> >
> > While Greg K-H's attempt to solve the issue is admirable... "trust me
> > I talked to anonymous clueful people" is less than convincing.
>
> Then go hire some IP lawyers yourself. You and I debating this on a mailing
> list is far less than what prominent developers (copyright holders, even)
> think.
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