[Mono-devel-list] ByteFX development

[Massimiliano Mantione]

On Wed, 2004-09-22 at 17:05, Joshua Tauberer wrote:
> On the other hand, written protocol specifications are protected by 
> copyright law.  Can you read a specification and then implement a 
> program that follows it without creating a derivative work?  This I 
> don't know.

I should be hacking, and not pretending to do a lawyer's job
(which I don't like, IANAL, standard disclaimer...).

Anyway, remember that writing a commentary to a copyrighted book is
not a copyright violation, even if the commentary is as long as the
whole book, and more of less indirectly exposes all the contents of
the book, provided that you do not *copy* the book in the commentary
(it is *copy*right we're talking about).

It is often said that copyright protects the "form", not the
"meaning".

In the same way, if you do not copy substantial portions of the
protocol specification text inside the code of your implementation
(one wonders why you'll ever do it) you cannot commit a copyright
infringement writing your code.

And yes, even if you use some specific words (like PDU names) from
the specification you should be safe.

Otherwise, I think no protocol could be implemented!

Ciao,
  Massi