On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 11:01 PM, Andy Elvey <andy.el...@paradise.net.nz>wrote:
> On 25/07/12 16:06, John Floren wrote: > (snip) > > Just write the code, nobody cares. The manual pages define an interface, > and you're going to implement it. The manual pages are copyrighted, sure, > because they're written works and are automatically protected by copyright. > Besides the recent Google vs. Oracle fiasco, I can't think of a time an > open-source project had legal problems by writing new code to implement an > API. And, based on a brief reading of > http://www.groklaw.net/pdf3/OraGoogle-1202.pdf, it looks as though a US > judge has ruled that an API is not subject to copyright; if you implement > the 9P API, you should be fine. Also, since you're doing a free > reimplementation of code which is currently available free to everyone by > the creators (Lucent), I have a hard time figuring out exactly what basis > they'd have for a lawsuit. john > > Hi John - thanks for that. > Thanks also to everyone who has commented in this thread - you've been > very helpful! This is one of the most helpful lists that I've been on. > This feedback is very useful as a guide to how to proceed. > > Although I'm not running Plan 9 at present (I'm on Linux), I'm very > impressed with its elegance. Everything from kbdfs to the plumber to the > Venti filesystem - it's all beautifully thought-out. The way that Venti > uses SHA1 hashes to store data reminds me a lot of Git (which I also really > like - there's another elegantly designed bit of software). > Thanks again, all - bye for now :) > - Andy > > Linux of course has v9fs which is a 9P implementation in the kernel.
