Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards

[Jeroen Dekkers]

On Wed, Apr 10, 2002 at 02:42:53PM +0200, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> >From: Alex Hudson <home at alexhudson.com>
> 
> >> 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.
> 
> Sorry, this is nonsense! The gain of knowledge to Computer Science from
> Linux is zero - most of the "ideas" have been copied from Sun.

I think both Linux and SunOS are an copy of the idea of unix.

> If you were right, then Linux hackers would not be able copy Sun's ideas.

AFAIK most Linux hackers have never run SunOS (at least not when they
wrote Linux in the beginning), keep to the facts please. GNU/Linux and
SunOS are both implementation of an 30 year old idea. 

Oh, yes, GNU/Linux and SunOS share some features, maybe there might be
even some features in Linux which Sun invented, but the overall design
is just Unix and the ideas of SunOS are just copied from Unix.

> In addition, you seem to regret the fact that there are many publically
> available white papers from Sun describing SunOS internals - as well
> as many RFC's posted by Sun.

Oh, cool! But if we just had the freedom to look at, change and
redistribute the SunOS code, it would have been much better.
 
> >> 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.
> 
> As for the NIT, it could make sense to search the AT&T Streams
> documents

Did AT&T also copy those things from Sun? Or did Sun copy it from
them? 

You might like SunOS, you can run it and hack it as much as you want,
but please don't advocate it on this list which is about *Free
Software*.

Jeroen Dekkers
-- 
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