Re: [ros-kernel] Use or not use

[Casper H. <ch...@us...>]

man, 2002-05-27 kl. 10:15 skrev Jason Filby:
> This actually opens a wider discussion about header files and
> copyright in general. The only choice we really have is to go ahead
> and use the header file information. Copy and paste doesn't make a
> difference - since any kind of transformation still violates
> copyright - even if you retype everything, it's still transformation.
> We will just have to, if the time comes, defend our right to use
> header file information for the sake of compatibility. Here's a paper
> related to this point of view:
> 
> http://eu.conecta.it/paper/Open_source_copyright_law.html
> 
> My opinion at least (and the author of the paper).
> 
> - Jason

I hope that last sentence is correct; that header files are not
completely copyrightable. Next month, I will be contributing a free
Windows XP DDK to MinGW which is mostly copy/pasted from the Windows DDK
documentation. Unfortunatly, some needed structures are not documented
in the Windows DDK documentation. There are three cases: 1) The
structures are not mentioned in the Windows DDK documentation, only in
the header files. I have left most of these out since they are usually
not important. 2) The structures are mentioned in the Windows DDK
documentation, but only referenced by name from other structures. I have
included these, copy/pasted them from the header files. 3) Microsoft
seems to have a policy that constants are only mentioned by name in the
Windows DDK documentation, and they are defined in the header files, so
I have copy/pasted them from there.
The Windows DDK documentation explicitly states that you may not copy
any information in it without permission, but they will probably just
state this in order to keep us from trying.

- Casper