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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: ALWAYS FREE?
From:       Jost Schenck <uzsnty () uni-bonn ! de>
Date:       1999-09-14 19:04:53
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On Tue, 14 Sep 1999, Simon Hausmann wrote:
> I don't really want to jump into the discussion, but:
> Even the OMG itself copyrights CORBA interfaces...


The copyright notice in an IDL file copyrights the file, but not the interface
(yes, even with IDL there's still a difference). That means: you can only use
the file the way its license permits. You can reimplement the interface by
writing another IDL file, no license problems.
As Bernd pointed out, most software licenses deal with linking, and you don't
link to an IDL file. However, aggressive licenses like the GPL will infect the
output of an IDL preprocessor, which might be a legal problem.
All in all, as the interface (to which an IDL file reduces, in contrast to a
c++-header) is not copyrightable in the countries I know of, you can always
write your own IDL file using the same interface. But then a normal license is
ridiculous, a copyright note about the author and something like the BSD license
would best.
-Jost (who, being a law student and no REAL programmer, suddenly feels much more
on his turf :-)

--
Jost Schenck
jost@schenck.de

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