Andrew Suffield wrote: > On Thu, Aug 12, 2004 at 09:32:15AM -0700, Ken Arromdee wrote: >>On Thu, 12 Aug 2004, Nathanael Nerode wrote: >> >>>The kernel provides a public, documented, freely implementable interface >>>of system calls. I don't know if you can replace it with something >>>else, but you should be able to. >> >>Then any Windows program which uses undocumented Windows system calls (of >>which there are plenty) is a derivative work of Windows and can't be >>distributed without Microsoft's permission, at least until someone discovers >>the system calls and implements them in Wine? > > Given the licenses on Windows and its SDK, MS probably owns your first > born if you write *any* Windows program. Expecting freedom for > developers on Windows is probably silly, since normal users don't > have it either.
Agreed. You could always cross-compile programs with MinGW and test them with Wine; it would be extremely difficult to argue that it was a derived work at that point. However, they could probably still go after you and cost you plenty of money, even if they couldn't win. - Josh Triplett
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