[openbeos] Re: Sunday amusement
- From: John Tegen <john.tegen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "'openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx'" <openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 13:02:06 -0800
I'm not a lawyer (I just play one on TV ;-)). But a possible suit from the
owners of the BeOS goes beyond what is underneath the covers. If the look
and design can be confused with the original, by the consumer, then there
are copyright laws that protect the author of that design (in this case
Palm). If the OS is a 100% knock off of the original (except maybe its
name) in terms of look, behavior, design, API, then that product is
violating the copyright of the original. It becomes more of a question will
Palm enforce that copyright. They would if they felt the clone product
threatens them or that the consumer may be confused by the clone (unlikely
here since Palm is not currently marketing their original). As far as I
know, there is no BeOS US patents with R5, because that would be another can
of worms.
This does not change anything with OBOS since Palm is idle with the BeOS
publicly. It just becomes an issue if they try to market an aspect of the
BeOS that is copied by OBOS.
-----Original Message-----
From: Bryan Varner [mailto:bman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Saturday, January 26, 2002 12:23 PM
To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [openbeos] Re: Sunday amusement
> Well, here is what amused me - under limitations (in the EULA) it
> actually says that you cannot reverse engineer this "program". Also,
> it
> says that you cannot release benchmarks of this "program" without
> written permission from BeInc. Amusing. but who reads the EULA
> anyway.
I read that some time ago. For a class in school (over a year ago) we
had to write a report about a EULA.. I chose the R5 Pro EULA.
I do not see OBOS as reverse engineering the OS. We're merely
duplicating the results. Can a company that makes a toaster press
charges because another company made a toaster? even if the internals
are nothing alike? I don't think so.
We are producing code that preforms the same functions. The outcome
will be the same (to follow the above analogy - toasted bread) but the
way that it does it may be entirely different.
That's my .02
-Bryan
--
Fortune Cookie Says:
Don't change the reason, just change the excuses!
-- Joe Cointment
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