🚀 go-pugleaf

I am not an expert in the field, so (maybe unlike others before me) I am 
opening this with a statement that I am not %100 percent sure of this. If you
can point me to valid sources to refute this, please do so. No judo arguments
will be helpful.

1. Apple's only audio visual copyright is on HyperCard. Previous posters have
said that Apple's design of the Mac Interface happend before the a&v copyright
went into law and therefore it is not protected by it. This I believe is true.
Apple settled a dispute over the origin of HyperCard to settle any doubts also.

2. The issue before the courts has only to do with the contract between Apple
and Microsoft. There was a cross license (Apple got Applesoft Basic for a few
more years, and Bill got to write windows). Apple claims that Microsoft
went beyond that contract.

Many people have commented that this is only the first lawsuit that Apple
plans to file. Since the lawsuit is really a contract dispute, and Apple
does not have the audio & visual copyright, I cannot imagine them going after
Motif, etc...

The Mac interface is NOT the only graphical user interface (I'm typing from a
NeXT at the momemnt). 

IMHO, Apple feels that the 3+ years they spent designing the original interface and 7+ years maintaining it gives them the right to protect the work. I agree.
But I believe they only have a right to protect the "gestalt". They don't have
the right to overlapping windows, icons, trash cans, etc. However, I do believe
if you double-click a icon, get a window, and then can drag the icon to the
trash, that It is a mac-interface and Apple has the right to sue.

I know that no matter what anyone writes. No matter what the actual facts are,
people have their minds made up. However, the FSF boycott is simply silly.
It has made no dent in Apple's sales (witness the 750,000 mac classics that
will be sold in 1991). The only people that it could possible effect would
be programmers. The idea that was will indirectly effect Apple (by lowering
software production) is ludercrious. Most software development on the Mac
is done by large companies which have the capital to buy any commercial compiler, etc.
The independent developer has the excellent choices of Think Pascal, and Think
C (Standard disclaimer...I neither work for them, etc...) for very resonable
prices (both for prices less than some GNU distributions) and a 
excellent C++ native code compiler.

So go ahead. Boycott Apple. I won't. (Although I did buy a NeXT instead).
The boycott of grapes have been lingering around for 20+ years. Feel free
to wait 20 years on this one.
/s