[fpc-devel] 2.0.4-rc3 available

[Daniël Mantione]

Op Tue, 15 Aug 2006, schreef Jonas Maebe:

> 
> On 15 Aug 2006, at 13:29, Marco van de Voort wrote:
> 
> > > On 15 Aug 2006, at 12:41, Jonas Maebe wrote:
> > > 
> > > > Not only passing them on, but to re-license them under the GPL or
> > > > (modified) LGPL.
> > > 
> > > Or pretty much any other Open Source/Free Software license for that
> > > matter...
> > 
> > I was thinking more for reference, and less for reuse.
> 
> The problem is that if you use source code "for reference", your source code
> automatically gets tainted by the original one. To be clean you would need
> someone to write reference documentation based on the original source code,
> and other people reading this documentation to write their own implementation
> (like Phoenix did with the original IBM Bios).

In that case Borland own copyrights on our RTL.

The actual situation is more nuanced. Implementing from documentation is 
one way you are reasonably sure to be free from copyright claims.

However, having studied foreign source code does not mean your own source 
code is poluted, for example article 45l of Dutch copyright law is quite a legal
obstable for someone claiming copyright infringement.

The border between tainted and not tained code is not written in any law, 
and will be up to personal interpretation to judges.

Daniël