I agree that this thread is interesting, although there has been some confusion over the derivation of sub classes from a base class in object-oriented programming and the meaning of derivative work as a matter of copyright law. Interestingly enough, some of the confusion emanates from the ill-conceived ways copyright doctrine applies to software, not just misunderstandings of copyright law. I published an article in the Columbia Science & Technology Law Review(www.stlr.org) that, among other things, makes the claim that some OO-programming practices demonstrate why the scope of protection of copyright for source code is far too extensive. One could make a persuasive showing that programming practices that use inheritance, encapsulation, polymorphism, and similar practices demonstrate thata great deal of source code constitutes a cauldron of ideas, and only a scintilla of original expression. Hence, OOP supports the idea of open source.
Rod Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Wed, 24 Oct 2001, Randy Kramer wrote: > I find this thread interesting, and hope that when some consensus is > reached (or the thead dies down and there is perhaps an "agreement to > disagree") that someone can summarize the areas of consensus and > disagreement for a layman. (Perhaps the best resting place for > something like that is on a wiki -- if someone else writes a summary I > would be happy to host it on my TWiki.) > > I am not a lawyer, and have not read this thread with enough > understanding to make any comments except the following: > > Michael Beck wrote: > > Since java.util.Dictionary is an abstract class, and you override abstract > > methods, I agree with you. By having abstract methods in a class, IMHO the > > author gives the user implicitly the right to create a subclass and override the > > abstract methods. > > Re: "IMHO the author gives the user implicitly the right to create a > subclass and override the abstract methods." > > I'm not so sure -- creating abstract methods is useful for the original > version of the program, to be overridden by derived classes in the > original. Simply the presence of abstract classes does not mean that > the author intends for others to also derive from those classes. (IMHO, > and in my limited knowledge of C++). > > Randy Kramer > -- > license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3 > -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3