Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards

[Alex Hudson]

On Wed, 2002-04-10 at 13:03, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> >Sadly, that doesn't count as prior art, sorry. If it was Free Software,
> >you might have a case, or if they exported the raw interface via an API
> >- was that done?
> 
> While I don't understand why close source cannot be prior art

Because it's not in the art. The art is Computer Science, not writing
Sun's OS. The gain of knowledge to Computer Science from Sun having done
it is zero.

> of course
> it was documented:

Yep. Sadly, the documentation only shows you how to access it, not how
it was done. So, it's not even arguably prior art. With Free Software,
you are sharing the knowledge of the implementation, which is the
important thing.

Cheers,

Alex.

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