[fpc-devel] 2.0.4-rc3 available

[Jonas Maebe]

On 15 Aug 2006, at 14:12, Daniël Mantione wrote:

>> 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.

If some of the people who wrote the RTL looked at how Borland did  
things and imitated that, then yes, in principle Borland co-owns the  
copyright on parts of our RTL. There's however the EU Software  
Copyright directive which gives an exclusion in case it was for the  
sole purpose of achieving interoperability -- which is quite  
appropriate in this case.

> 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.

Indeed, but I'm not sure if this exists in all copyright laws. I  
can't find something in the Belgian copyright law at least.

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

That is true, but better safe than sorry. At least I'm not interested  
in fighting any lawsuit whatsoever, nor in having to throw away tons  
of work because we weren't careful enough.


Jonas