Re: Does GNUstep infringe on Apple's Intellectual Property?

[John Anderson]

I am not yet an expert on software copyright law, but I think that 
Apple's copyrights on OpenStep and Cocoa give it, at least, owner of 
the all the object names and methods under the "NS" prefix.  
Furthermore, I doubt  that simple changing the "NS" to something like 
"GS" would stand up in US Federal court for long.  Apple's copyrights 
could be interpreted broadly and generally.

I mean that to the extent that software has not been "patentable," 
copyright is being used in a more abstract sense.  This is increasing 
happening on US college campus, where students and scholars are using 
US copyright law to protect themselves from having their work stolen by 
plagiarists.


On Sunday, August 24, 2003, at 10:34 PM, Tima Vaisburd wrote:

> On Sunday 24 August 2003 17:13, John Anderson wrote:
>
> > I mean, it appears clear to me that GNUstep is a derivative work
> > that must violate Apple's copyrights on OpenStep and Cocoa.
>
> I presume that GNUstep is an independent, from-scratch implementation
> of the OpenStep API that has been published as open API, i.e.
> anybody can write it's own implementation.
>
> Thus, GNUstep is not an Apple derivative work at all
> and violates no Apple copyright whatsoever.
>
> Is this correct?
>
> Tima.
>
>
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