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

From: Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com>
To: Ga?l Le Mignot <kilobug@freesurf.fr>
Cc: Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com>,
	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 07:39:33 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20030725143933.GA13840@work.bitmover.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <plopm3wue72alp.fsf@drizzt.kilobug.org>

On Fri, Jul 25, 2003 at 11:56:34AM +0200, Ga?l Le Mignot wrote:
> 
>  >   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.

Which is a lossy export.  Of course reverse engineering of Word is allowed,
you didn't get all your data.  You can get *all* of your data out of BK,
by definition.  BK can start with the data it exports and rebuild the 
revision history.  So can you.  So you are needlessly arguing.

> 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. 

Really?  Show me that law please.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm