> On Saturday 17 February 2007 15:19, David Schwartz wrote: > > Static Controls argued that taking the TLP was the only practical way to > > make a cartridge that would work with that printer.
> Which shows how that case is different from writing Linux drivers. For > example, looking at the example the OP was himself proposing a few > alternative approaches to work around the limitation they were hitting: > could just switch to static major/minors instead of dynamics ones, they > could skip sysfs, or they could even reimplement something like sysfs > themselves, or whatever other interface they deem useful for the > purpose of > plopping in their own binary blob on top of it, sort of like what nVidia > and ATi do for their stuff. These are all different functional ideas. It is no response to an argument like this to say, "you could always express a different idea". Copyright only protects the one way the author chose to express an idea. You should not ever need to change an idea to get around copyright. I hate to sound like a broken record, but have you read Lexmark v. Static Controls? There was a section where they talked about how perhaps you could have used a different algorithm to measure the toner level. You may have to change your idea to get around a patent, but you should never, ever have to change a functional idea to get around a copyright. Do you realize that you are arguing for software patents? And worse, for patents that are easy to get (and last as long) as copyrights. DS - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
