@jorit2

That was a direct quote from the EU Court of Justice final part of the ruling.

I was surprised as well but this is at the law stands in the EU and EEA.

The Court has since even gone further than that.

_________________

@Hyperionmp

And since that pesky "AROS is probably illegal" thingy was brought up in this very thread, and since Hyperion has so-far failed to show any theft of code in AROS , despite AROS being open-source, I guess you have to agree with me now that AROS is probably legal ?

Evert

Last edited by jorit2 on 12-Sep-2015 at 10:22 PM.

_________________
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@jorit2

I guess it falls to other forms of protections now , documents
(such as manuals) are protected by same legal rules as books
and literature.

Pictures (?) are protected by rules regarding using other people art then?

I can see this causing many problems if it becomes "norm".

On the other hand the danger is always there if you give your source
code with program.It's always nice but also allows other to make
their own versions and proving that it's 99 % your code could be
tough.But as Amiga is concerned and it's APIs i would say impossible
so why bother.If it's something dear to you just distribute binary only.

Was gonna mention AROS but bad timing
As for that I would say AROS was already legal in most
countries of Europe (in my humble opinion) but does that
change it's position in US law ?

Last edited by blizz1220 on 12-Sep-2015 at 10:22 PM.

@jorit2

http://eu.conecta.it/paper/Open_source_copyright_law.html

Whilst only an opinion, not a ruling:

Quote:

The European Commission services, concerned by the effects of this new paradigm on Europe and on the landscape of information technology promoted the creation of a working group on libre software. This document has been written by this group, at the request of the European Commission, with the intent of clarifying the nature of the open source movement, its impact on the way that software products are created, maintained and used, and on the industry that currently produces and maintains such software.

This document mentions (in a paragraph relating to rulings wrt proprietary software) only that "That means that it is legal to rewrite a copyrighted header file, part of an interface, to create a compatible version."
To me this implies that while the information contained in a header file is not copyrightable (ie an undisclosed/proprietary API cannot be 'kept closed' through legal action), the text of the file itself may still be protected by copyright law.

But ianal, so...

Last edited by Boot_WB on 12-Sep-2015 at 10:36 PM.

_________________
Troll - n., A disenfranchised former potential customer who remains interested enough to stay informed and express critical opinions.
opp., the vast majority who voted silently with their feet.

@Boot_WB

There are ways to protect your commercial software and (c) is
not best form to do so.If for example Morphos Developers wanted
their SDK to be out of public eye then they should sell it for high
price or distribute it only to long time developers and those they
approve.

Posting this from non-EU country and still without any idea what
was claimed to be taken or of it's importance so I can only form
an opinion on others opinions which doesn't always paints full
picture (never).I wonder how many are in same position and will
just go with whoever they find more popular.

@blizz1220

The APIs are all public, there's no need or desire to restrict access to the SDK.

Storm in a teacup, or as Piru once said "someone be stealin' ma bucket", but understandable that a complaint would be raised and an apology expected given the history.

All seems to have been handled quite well imho, compliments to Costel for his response.

_________________
Troll - n., A disenfranchised former potential customer who remains interested enough to stay informed and express critical opinions.
opp., the vast majority who voted silently with their feet.

@Boot_WB

Quote:

compliments to Costel for his response

Although posts of "I agree" or "me too" are frowned upon by TOS, I'll take that risk.

Agreed.

#6

_________________
This posting, in its entirety, represents solely the perspective of the author.
*Secrecy has served us so well*

@Hyperionmp

Just so we are perfectly clear here --- this is the Director Legal Affairs of Hyperion CVBA stating that, as far as Hyperion is concerned, actual header files are not covered by EU copyright law, right? I.e the actual, textual expression of the APIs, structures and interfaces, as embodied in such text files, rather than the APIs, structures and interfaces themselves?

Could you, just for the record, confirm that view? It would be hugely appreciated!

(As an aside: You might want to re-word the SDK announcement as well. "Largely successful" does not mean what you think it means; Almost the opposite, in fact. What you are after is "hugely successful" or "enormously successful").

As for the legality of the header-and-docs copying: Even if one were to interpret the EU Court of Justice as you did (which I certainly wouldn't), one would still be faced with (a) the fact that Hyperion distributes the SDK to many non-EU countries, quite a few of which consider doing business on their turf to be a trigger for their jurisdiction to apply, and (b) the fact that the autodocs inarguably contain prose, which can hardly be said to be covered by that ruling.

(And yes, my use of the present tense in the preceding paragraph is intentional --- any suggestion that the current files are anything but derivatives of the MorphOS btree files is laughable)

@HL

Quote:

Why steal code really?

I shall repeat that for you: no one has stolen any code from Piru.

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@jorit2

First of all, in the US on appeal a decision to DENY copy protection to API's was reformed.

We will see if and when the Oracle versus Google case gets heard by the Supreme Court (although it primarily deals with the issue if you can copyright a programming language i.e. JAVA).

So in the US the current situation is that API's ARE subject to copyright protection.

Moreover, reimplementing a singe API or a few API's is one thing, doing this on a substantial scale is another.

Imagine a party were to reimplement substantially all of iOS API's to the extent that it exhibits a large degree of compatibility and market it to manufacturers of mobile devices. I am pretty sure you would be in court in no time.

There is a WTO panel decision that such action is "unjustifiably prejudicial" to the copyright holder.

You can draw your own conclusions, I won't take the bait ...

_________________

@umisef

I will not take the bait since you are not qualified to discuss these issues unless you have a law degree and specialize in copyright law. A career change which is entirely up to you.

It would become exceedlingly boring to the readers of this site.

I suggest you read my reply to Jorit2.

I will leave it at that because I have better things to do than lecture on copyright law and the differences between the EU and the US and that's just 2 markets.

_________________

>Imagine a party were to reimplement substantially all of iOS API's to the extent that it exhibits a large degree of compatibility and market it to manufacturers of mobile devices. I am pretty sure you would be in court in no time.

Of course not. Eg. ReactOS, Linux, AROS, MOS, Wine, etc. are all API reimplementations.

Last edited by Minuous on 13-Sep-2015 at 06:31 AM.

@Hyperionmp

Quote:

I will not take the bait since you are not qualified to discuss these issues

Well, Ben, here's the thing --- it doesn't need a lot of qualification to spot a hypocrite.

In your mail to your internet service provider, you stated categorically that SDK 53.29 did not infringe Piru's copyright. Quote: " there was no copyright protection to infringe in the first place".

As SDK 53.29 inarguably contained header and autodoc files derived from Piru's work, someone who is qualified to "discuss these issues" making such a statement would necessarily imply that header and autodoc files are not enjoying copyright protection.

The "someone" who made such a statement was the Director Legal Affairs for Hyperion CVBA, i.e. you.

Given that SKD 53.30 header files are full of Hyperion copyright notices, you making such a statement comes as a bit of a surprise.

So, please enlighten me --- does Hyperion

(a) Put explicit copyright notices into files that their own Director Legal Affairs consider to be not copyrightable, or
(b) Make statements to their internet service provider regarding a third party copyright that are contrary to their own Director Legal Affairs' own understanding of the legal situation?


Or, to put it more bluntly --- are you really trying to claim copyright on your headers, yet consider Piru's headers un-copyrightable? If no, which of the two is not a position you take? And if yes --- well, as I said, it doesn't take a legal degree to spot a hypocrite...

@Hyperionmp

There's a "Windows bridge for iOS" by Microsoft ...

@number6

Quote:

number6 wrote: @cdimauro Quote: Impressive. It's a pity that it isn't developed anymore Bernie drew comparisons to ARIXOS, but only Bernie can confirm that, since the website on which this was discussed is currently not accessible re:content. #6

Thanks. It'll be very interesting to see some benchmark, and maybe some information about the JITer.

@broadblues

Quote:

broadblues wrote: @HL Nobody stole any code , they were just too lazy to rewrite the docs.

Header files are code too.

Quote:

Last time I notice you were banned twice already ... hillybilly whatever you nick was.

Yes, "he did it again"...

@Boot_WB

Quote:

Boot_WB wrote: @jorit2 http://eu.conecta.it/paper/Open_source_copyright_law.html Whilst only an opinion, not a ruling: Quote: The European Commission services, concerned by the effects of this new paradigm on Europe and on the landscape of information technology promoted the creation of a working group on libre software. This document has been written by this group, at the request of the European Commission, with the intent of clarifying the nature of the open source movement, its impact on the way that software products are created, maintained and used, and on the industry that currently produces and maintains such software. This document mentions (in a paragraph relating to rulings wrt proprietary software) only that "That means that it is legal to rewrite a copyrighted header file, part of an interface, to create a compatible version." To me this implies that while the information contained in a header file is not copyrightable (ie an undisclosed/proprietary API cannot be 'kept closed' through legal action), the text of the file itself may still be protected by copyright law. But ianal, so...

Exactly: this is the point. And no, you don't require to be a lawyer, with a background on copyright law, to understand it.

The reported EU document (let aside the US question for the moment) is quite clear: "ideas", "principles", "functionality", "format of data" are NOT copyrightable.

That means that actually you can completely REWRITE a software keeping its (public) interface (APIs).

It means that you are allowed to use the same function names (even parameters names), type names, structure names, etc.: whatever is needed to allow a software to be completely interchangeable with another through the latter's APIs.

But that does NOT mean that you can COPY header files and documentation, even by rephrasing something. Here the copyright still applies, whatever Ben Herman can say.

Maybe a refresh about what's copyright can help, Ben?

BTW, umisef is, again, right.

Reading current state of law it seems to go in two directions.

One would be Windows like commercial OSes that will still be
sure to keep it's dominance by any legal means (they don't
have to sue Wine authors , they can make sure that stores that
would sell things like that in bundle with hardware don't get any
Windows from them for example).

Other would be Linux like open-source or more accurately GPL
licensed code that again seems to be getting a lot of support and
legal protection in recent times.

I don't see many room for others , they would probably be
handled on case to case basis.

Looks like AROS would do well to get on-board with GNU license
thus making it very legally safe in most of the known world.

@Georg

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/74820/20150808/
microsoft-open-sources-windows-bridge-for-ios-what-this-means.htm

ReactOs is under GPL (parts of it , I guess parts that could be problematic),
probably the same for Wine.

Last edited by blizz1220 on 13-Sep-2015 at 07:37 AM.

@blizz1220: AROS's APL is very similar to the LGPL. It means that it might be "GPL-compatible", so EFF lawyers can help in case of some violation.

Regarding the rest, the problem of REimplementing APIs stays primarily on some patent that can cover the API implementation. In short, even if an API is public, you cannot be sure that YOUR REimplementation is "safe" from a legal point of view.

[number6 MODE ON]
But that's a different thing regarding the copyright infringement that this thread is talking about, so maybe it's better to split the discussion to another thread.
[number6 MODE OFF]

@cdimauro

Number6 detected , thread re-routing to topic

Maybe I won't be popular for saying this but I will have to
take your word (and Umisef's) that this isn't something to
be proud of but I see few things in Hyperion's answer :

Way I read it from Piru's site :

"We have removed and replaced those files on your request but
we are not admitting guilt by this ( "allegedly" ) , rather being
aware of situation acting."

Asking for apology might be much , it's not legal thing it's
how polite you want to be.Answer seemed very neutral to me.
And who is the one who should apologize anyway , shouldn't
it be developer or representative of dev team ?

The legal part of answer I understood as counter-argument for
accusation of copyright theft.Coder might use different arguments
but this one is that too.

Last edited by blizz1220 on 13-Sep-2015 at 08:05 AM.