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Re: European Directive on Copyright Law (91/EC/250) wrt open source



On 2004-05-03 19:41:30 +0100 Arnoud Engelfriet <galactus@stack.nl> wrote:

For example, consider Microsoft licensing its standard libraries
under GPL.

People fork them and create competition?

or open source project with an incompatible license is entitled to
request a compatible license and if they do not receive one they
are entitled to treat the "interface" - i.e. the header files and
effectively the entire library - as not being subject to copyright
law!
Can you tell me what part of the directive actually says that, or which you are basing this conclusion on, please?
Article 2: Protection in accordance with this Directive shall apply
to the expression in any form of a computer program. Ideas and
principles which underlie any element of a computer program,
including those which underlie its interfaces, are not protected by
copyright under this Directive.

Ideas and principles are not copyrightable ever, are they? They are the wrong side of the idea-expression boundary. Copyright only covers expressions.

This is not news.

--
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing



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