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From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: Re: Historic Opportunity facing Free Unix (was Re: The Lai/Baker paper, benchmarks, and the world of free UNIX)
Date: Wed, 01 May 1996 23:32:41 -0700
Organization: Me
Lines: 102
Message-ID: <31885709.1D4E72E7@lambert.org>
References: <NELSON.96Apr15010553@ns.crynwr.com> <3176D081.794BDF32@FreeBSD.org> <4la318$ah3@sidhe.memra.com> <31794DB6.7DE974DF@lambert.org> <940@crane.ukc.ac.uk> <31866E12.67FD83BE@lambert.org> <4m8k99$o12@master.di.fc.ul.pt>
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Pedro Roque Marques wrote:
] : Their Lesstif clone worries me, mostly because of potential
] : legal problems caused by the way it was developed. They are
] : implementing interfaces which aren't publically documented
] : anywhere (programming books, OSF books, etc.) except in OSF
] : header files and the namelist of OSF libXm.a.
]
] Is this really problematic in terms of US law ?
] In Europe we are allowed to do that...
] If any european makes a document availiable with that info, by
] means legal in it's country, aren't Us citizens allowed to use
] it in developement of software?
I don't have a legal opinion. My educated opinion?
I'm really not sure.
To put it another way:
If the non-clean-room reverse engineering is happening in Europe,
it's certainly legal there for it to happen there.
I'm not so sure about the legal status of code reverse engineered
that way when you go to bring it into the US.
You might technically have violated the US license. Well, having
read the OSF/Motif license, you *have* violated it. The question
is whether you were bound by the terms of the license at the
time -- whether you have retroactively produced an illegal in
the US product.
I don't have a good answer for that one; it's the same question
from the Matrox thread, and before that the Adaptec and before
that Diamond.
I was so unsure about US law on international disclosure of
contractually protected trade secrets that I recommended that
the BSD 4.3 source code, and FreeBSD 1.1.5.1 in particular
be mirrored outside the US in non-Berne signatory countries
so the "property", if any was judged to have existed, was
not protected by treaty. This was after USL filed suit
against BSDI, but before the filing against UCB, and the code
was, in fact, mirroered in seven non-treaty countries to
"keep it free". Unfortunately, UCB wimped out on the suit,
so there's no case law one way or the other. It would have
been a nice president on trade secret diclosure rendering it
no longer secret.
If that happened, then disclosure of interfaces by Europeans
through legal-in-Europe methods to the world at large would
have allowed code disclosure to the US and made the code
legal in the US (since it could not embody trade secrets).
Bottom line: it's questionable what the outcome would be -- if
you assume both sides are equivalently funded. It would be
easy for OSF to file a nuisance lawsuit on any potential for
illegality, and get a permananet injunction without too much
trouble. Then it would be up to the Lesstif people to front
the costs or defy a court order and find themselves in contempt
of court (and defend the decision post-facto).
Either way, the developement methods for the undocumented Motif
interfaces leave it open to serious nuisance lawsuit liability.
It would be a lot easier to take standards documents in as your
evidence, if you could prove derivation of all code from public
documents.
There is also the LGPL issue, which in this case would prevent
someone like SCO deciding they'd paid enough roylaties and then
distributing in defiance of the order, and then backing the suit
because the royalty cost buy-out and the probable outcome. In
return, SCO would undoubtedly want to commercialize the code
far beyong the LGPL requirements. Among other things, the
fact that shared library data is statically linked in the
program image makes their shared library technology a potential
LGPL violation waiting to happen. A data change without an
interface change could cause this easily (I have asked that a
binding clarification statement recognizing shared library
technology be issued by FSF several times, to no effect).
So: I don't know for sure. But I'd have to assess the risk of
potential for future problems as being high, were I a commercial
user.
You could probably get a better answer from a real lawyer, but
then a real lawyer wouldn't understand the relink clause relative
to the state of the art (but would understand that OSF is likely
to file suit if you try to murder its cash cow).
Or to put it yet another way: I don't get the warm fuzzies.
Terry Lambert
terry@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.