Eric Auer schrieb: > Hi Michael, > > indeed, MS LFN started with version 7 (Win9x)... > >> What about FreeDOS kernel and LFN? Wouldn't it make sense >> also to add LFN to the FreeDOS kernel? > > Yes but: The DOSLFN license does not allow it so you would > have to re-implement LFN from scratch and there is also a > risk to get nagging from MS because some LFN things are > still patented by Microsoft. For now, the DOSLFN way works > very well, although not perfect, for my few LFN needs.
What is the non-theoretic scare that you have? Do you think if YOU going to implement LFN then it will be personally YOU how get sued? If it is not YOU who is it then? FreeDOS is actually not a cooperate or something else. Otherwise I would say that if you are scared of Microsoft patents then you can publish nothing you have developed. Because 1) Not only Microsoft has patents, many others have also. 2) Microsoft is not the only patent nitpicker. 3) pathenthese is the most hard language, quote of an engineer "I wouldn't recognize my own constructions in phathenthese." 4) Microsoft has even a patent on double clicks 5) Microsoft has still the FAT patent and used it to extort TomTom recently. 6) There are even more patents then laws. If you want to read and understand all patents and have them in back mind while programming... That's simply not possible because ordinary human brain can not remember so many things at the same time (already theoretically assumed that you can even understand the patents). 7) Patents are prohibitions only. It's like "do this not, do this not, do this not, etc.". Humans brain works on imagination, it's not possible to imagine "nothing" because the whole life exists and it is always "something". "Keep of the grass!" as a alone sentence is not effective, rather it should be "Use the footpath." because this is something you can imagine. It's not possible to invert or implement something if you brain is full with "don't do this" while at the same time there is not alternative "do it like this" for so many things. >From that view it's not possible for non-cooperates (individual hobbyist projects) to develop and publish software. You would always need a legal department which is telling "it's ok to violate patents, if them are are accusing us we will accuse them with out collection of patents or we will let us extort and pay them", followed by "as long no one accusing us it's all fine". In a cooperate you have as a programmer the additional advantage that the legal department exists out of lawyers and in case of court ruling only the cooperate is sued but not the individual programmer. -mr ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
