Caitlyn Martin wrote:
>> No, they bought an operating system, then designed a GUI for it based on
>> what was already being done by other GUIs (as in MacOS,
Deirdre Saoirse wrote:
> Actually, they paid Apple for source code and the right to create a
> derivative work. In fact, Windows is a derivative work of the MacOS.
hm... i'm not going to say that that's incorrect because i don't know for
sure, but i've never heard this before... i suppose it's possible.
but i do know this: even if micros~1 paid for some of these things, they
*did* also illegally copy some other things from apple. apple threatened
to sue (i forget whether it was patent or copyright issues, or both), and
micros~1 responded by threatening to stop developing applications for
macintosh. so apple put the whole thing on hold... now, that there was a
pretty sleazy thing for micros~1 to do, but i suspect it was legal (the
part about threatening to stop developing for macintosh), since it was not
a monopoly situation.
the whole thing wasn't resolved until two years ago when micros~1 invested
$150 million in apple and committed to developing over the next 5 years as
many releases of office for mac as for windows, in exchange for which apple
agreed to make explorer the default browser installed with MacOS. and part
of that deal involved some cross-licensing agreement which finally resolved
all the patent and/or copyright infringements they had both threatened each
other with over the years.
...derF\lieN
Neil "Fred" Picciotto --- [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- http://www.derf.net/
************
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linuxchix.org
