Re: The GPL and you
On Sun, 31 Aug 2003, Anthony DeRobertis wrote:
>
> On Sunday, Aug 31, 2003, at 18:54 US/Eastern, Daniel Isacc Walker wrote:
>
> > I use talkfilters data structures and API in my code. Is
> > that a derivate work? Everything else I've read indicates that it
> > isn't..
>
> We had a rather recent discussion about this, I believe in the context
> of perl's dbd mysql stuff. In short, I happen to agree with you; others
> on this list may agree or disagree, but Debian's policy seems to be
> paranoia: Assume that is a derivative work, in part because the FSF
> says so.
That's interesting. In the Wine community the majority opinion is
that the Win32 API and data structures are not copyrightable. My opinion
is derived mainly from my work with Wine. Since the Win32 API is so vast
(100's of functions and structures) I would think if header files are
copyrightable then the Win32 headers must be copyrighted by Microsoft.
As far as I know, Microsoft hasn't attacked Wine for using the API .
I could be mixing two distinct ideas here. Copyrighting a header
file could be completely different from copyrighting an API .. Ever though
they seem like the same thing.
Daniel Walker
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