Re: Switching to the OSL License, in a dual way.

From: kilobug@freesurf.fr (Gaël Le Mignot)
To: Larry McVoy <lm@work.bitmover.com>
Cc: Leandro Guimar?es Faria Corsetti Dutra <lgcdutra@terra.com.br>,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Switching to the OSL License, in a dual way.
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 11:56:34 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <plopm3wue72alp.fsf@drizzt.kilobug.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20030724215744.GA7777@work.bitmover.com> (Larry McVoy's message of "Thu, 24 Jul 2003 14:57:44 -0700")

 >   BK  already   provides   more   than  enough   in   the  way   of
 > interoperability,  both on  the way  in and on  the way  out.  It's
 > trivial to get your data out  of BK as well as your metadata.  It's
 > a small perl  script to get all the info out  and plop it into some
 >  other  system, we're  much  better about  that  than  any free  or
 > commercial system.

And MS  Word allows to  export data in  plain text or html.   But it's
still allowed to  reverse MS Word to make  a .doc import/export plugin
for OpenOffice or Abiword.

This is  exactly the  same. As  long as there  is a  data format  or a
protocol involved,  European laws allow users to  reverse engineer it,
to  be  able to  create  another program  using  the  same format  and
protocols. 

All data formats and protocol  should be publically available. This is
absolute required for  a full inter-operability, and to  give to users
the freedom of  choice. If they are not,  then European laws guarantee
us that we are free to try to find out by ourselves. And I'm glad this
law exists.

-- 
Gael Le Mignot "Kilobug" - kilobug@nerim.net - http://kilobug.free.fr
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