[fpc-devel] regarding RTTI unit mail

[Hans-Peter Diettrich]

Daniël Mantione schrieb:

> If the order of elements is enforced, it is not a creative decision, 
> thus both programmers can make the same decision without violating each 
> others copyright.

How can one be sure that the arrangement is not required, somehow? ;-)

>> An interface is a contract, and as such every translation *must* 
>> follow the original closely.
> 
> Be happy an interface by itself is not copyrightable. If you read about 
> the history about the software directive there was a big fight about 
> this, because some companies like IBM wanted copyright to protect them 
> against clones from the far east, while others actually wanted 
> interoperating competing products.

Competing products seem to have won, else FPC and Lazarus were illegal.

> But even though they are not copyrightable, you cannot verbatimly copy 
> interface files. There is copyright on the expression of them.

ACK.



> http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31991L0250:EN:HTML

Thanks :-)

I didn't know that the Directive is so old, and has become part of the 
German law almost literally.

DoDi