🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <DREIER.92Sep15145233@lhasa.berkeley.edu> dreier@lhasa.berkeley.edu (Roland Dreier) writes:

I wrote:
>Apple has sued uSoft and HP over "user-interface copyright violation."
and
>USL is suing BSDI and UCB, claiming that the Net/2 tape contains copyrighted
>(or trade-secret-protected) USL code.

Roland wrote:
>So let me get this straight: Apple sued people, claiming their
>copyrights were infringed.  This, of course, was evil and perfectly
>valid grounds for a boycott.  USL is in the process of suing some
>people, claiming that their copyrights were infringed.  Of course,
>this is completely understandable and we shouldn't hold it against
>them.

Now, my first reaction is to say, "Huh?  Are you *stupid*?  Do you or do you
not see any sort of difference between the two paragraphs I wrote?"  But I
won't do that.  I'll just, very calmly, say:

The LPF, the FSF, and a whole mess of people unaffiliated with either
(including myself) do not believe in the validity of a "user-interface"
copyright, that is, that the actions and "look'n'feel" of a program or
system are copyrightable.  A large number of the people in that group
(including myself) believe that making a "user-interface" copyright valid is
going to open up a whole can of worms, and potentially destroy the
free-software market, namely by making it illegal for someone to come up
with a work-alike program for free that some entity has a non-free version
of.

In addition, USL has expressly stated that they *WILL NOT* sue people who
clone their system, such as MWC's Coherent.  Their problem with the Net/2
tape is that they claim it contains portions of their code.  They may or may
not be right; I do not think they are, but I think they may have enough
doubt to justify a lawsuit.

The rest of the posting is more of what I would call idiocy if I were in the
mood, but I'm not, so I'll just call it purposeful ignorance, and leave it
up to Roland to do some research into the subject before posting again.  Or
at least have someone else try to point out his errors.

-- 
Sean Eric Fagan  | "You can't get lost in one room, no matter how
sef@kithrup.COM  |  little effort you make to learn your way around."
-----------------+    -- William E Davidsen (william@crd.GE.COM)
Any opinions expressed are my own, and generally unpopular with others.