[Mono-docs-list] Re: [Mono-dev] Current state of documentation?

[Joshua Tauberer]

(I'm taking my reply to mono-docs-list.)

Brian Crowell wrote:
>> Unless the ECMA docs have been released under an open-source-ish
>> license, they're copyrighted and can't be 'imported' without permission
>> from the copyright holder.  I don't know if they're licensed at all.
> 
> There's a fundamental problem here: Any documentation you could write
> for the base classes must necessarily be a derivative work of the
> original ECMA documentation.

That position rests on a number of legal issues that aren't well
resolved.  Are method signatures derivative works?  Are the entire class
libraries (the Mono source code) derivative works?  I don't think these
questions have been resolved in U.S. courts.

-- 
- Joshua Tauberer

http://taubz.for.net

"Unfortunately, we're having this discussion. It's too bad,
because guess who listens to the discussion: the enemy."