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Re: Copyright problems for the opensource reimplementation of a closed-source library (ITP #679504)



Roger Leigh <rleigh@codelibre.net> writes:

> To avoid any implication that anything from the headers has been copied,
> why not just use the output of "nm [-D]".  This is the interface that
> programs use to link with the library, and is what you need to provide
> as a drop-in replacement.

I'm also not a lawyer, and you'd really need to get a legal opinion, but
I'm fairly sure that this is excessively conservative.  The prototypes in
the header (sans any macros, inline functions, or comments) constitute a
functional interface, which is not copyrightable in the US and I believe
is not copyrightable in Europe either.  There is some precendent for doing
something similar to what you're doing (see readline/editline).

Of course, even if what you're doing is perfectly legal, that doesn't
prevent someone from suing you anyway.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>


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