Hi Brian, Henning, Nathanael thanks for bringing some light into this issue. I feel like I'm not walking on thin ice and it's worth continuing my work. Uwe On Mon, Nov 17, 2003 at 12:55:13AM -0500, Nathanael Nerode wrote: > > > > > >I wonder if there are any legal issues if I took the description > >of the api and implemented my only library, which would be for > >my purposes a sufficient replacement. > > > "Clean room" reimplementation is legally safe (in most countries, > anyway). For instance, if you take a free program designed to use the > library (but which doesn't copy anything from the library), rediscover > the library's API by looking at the calls made by the free program, and > reimplement the library from that, you're definitely safe. You're safe > looking at the published documentation of the library as well, as long > as you don't copy literally from it. > > Interfaces themselves can't be copyrighted; only texts can be > copyrighted. Referencing published works for information is legal as > long as you don't copy any text (or only copy uncopyrightable segments > of text). (Because the information is published, it can't be trade > secrets.) Patents are another matter entirely, but it's best not to > think too hard about them. :-/ > > >Couldn't I publish my > >code without running into problems? May a use the header files > >from the commercial library or at least to the user of my > >library where to get them? > > > You can use *uncopyrightable* portions of the header files. It might be > legally safer not to mess around with the header files, if you can > easily reconstruct appropriate "work-alike" headers from safer sources. > (After all, your library needs its own headers, and you can't just copy > the header file text wholesale.) > > Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer; this is just my rough understanding of > things. > -- MMK GmbH, Universitaetsstr. 11, 58097 Hagen Uwe.Steinmann@mmk-hagen.de Tel: +2331 840446 Fax: +2331 843920
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