Re: The GPL and you

[Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com>]

Quoting Daniel Isacc Walker (dwalker@cats.ucsc.edu):

> 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.

I think you may have a point.  During the AT&T vs. UC Regents lawsuit,
part of UC's defence against charges that BSD incorporated AT&T UNIX
32V's header files was that was functional code required for
compatibility, so that code written for 32V could run on BSD without
having to replicate all the header files' definitions and declarations.
Copyright law has traditionally given considerable leeway for
compatibility requirements, and generally only "expressive" code
qualifies for copyright coverage, not "functional" code.

I would tend to think that the talkfilters data structures and API are
not copyrightable.  (But IANAL, TINLA.)

-- 
Cheers,           find / -user your -name base -print | xargs chown us:us
Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com