Re: Corel's apt frontend
On Wed, Nov 03, 1999 at 01:05:53PM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote:
> What Raul seems to be getting at is that dpkg is presently the only
> existing implementation og the command-line interface in question.
>
> His arguments apparently lead to a general principle: if, for some
> protocol (a command line interface is a particular example of a
> protocol, but one of the basic premises of the argument is that
> such technical differences are irrelevant) there is only one existing
> implementation of one side of the protocol, then every implementation
> of the *other* side of the protocol automatically becomes deriviate
> of the implementation of the first side.
>
> I don't think copyright law acknowledges such a principle.
Copyright law (by which I mean U.S. Copyright law) does indeed
have such a principle, but it's formulated very differently:
According to U.S. Copyright law,
A ''computer program'' is a set of statements or instructions to
be used directly or indirectly in a computer in order to bring
about a certain result.
Notice that this doesn't care about protocols or interfaces. If the
instructions are used to produce the result they're part of the
program -- this is a very inclusive statement.
To balance this out, there's also a concept of fair use. Most uses
of the command line interface count as fair use.
I'm not going to go into this any deeper. I've posted that definition of
a computer program something like a dozen times and most of the responses
I've gotten don't even acknowledge the key issues. I worry that a second
sentence would be too complicated for people.
--
Raul
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