From: Rik van Riel (riel@conectiva.com.br)
Date: Fri Sep 01 2000 - 15:43:27 MDT
[Non-member submission]
On Sat, 2 Sep 2000, Michael S. Lorrey wrote:
> SO they took a piece of freely available information and
> MODIFIED IT to make it proprietary information.
And then proceeded to advertise it as if it were open.
Furthermore, they closed the road to reverse-engineering
(which is explicitly allowed for interoperability reasons)
by publishing their extensions of the protocol with a
shrink-wrap license.
In effect, they made it (in their reading of the law)
legally impossible for other people to create a competing
implementation of their "standard", even though doing such
a thing would normally be an action that is explicitly
allowed by the law.
But hey, if you prefer to read the law in a way that makes
competition impossible, that's your good right.
regards,
Rik
--
"What you're running that piece of shit Gnome?!?!"
-- Miguel de Icaza, UKUUG 2000
http://www.conectiva.com/ http://www.surriel.com/
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