On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 7:18 PM, Geoffrey Hausheer winedevel9605@phracturedblue.com wrote:
On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 9:06 AM, Wolfram Sang wrote:
task. There doesn't appear to be anything in this code that would be patent encumbered, but the code itself certainly falls under Hidenori's copyright which he has effectively revoked permission to use.
Strictly speaking, this is not possible. Although IANAL, this code is LGPL, so he can't revoke permission for this version of the code. He can ask to not use it, and this wish can be granted. You still should be allowed to pick it up. Next question is then, if a modified version will be picked up (still respecting the author's wish)? Or how much modifications are needed? Geez, such things are never trivial :(
Well, I put the LGPL header on the code. I thought I had that right since the code was posted to wine-patches Anyhow, the legal side isn't really relevant. The question is what Alexandre will accept as far as it goes. The current code is certainly copyright by Hienori, and since I couldn't contact him, I must assume he doesn't want any of it in Wine. Thus my assumption is that I need to rewrite the entire thing, if we want to obey his wishes (which I do). However, my hope was that I could use the knowledge I gained from his implementation to do it myself. As I'm already biased by that knowledge, if that won't be allowed, then I can't do the work at all.
As far as I remember Hidenori asked for removal of his Quartz work because he was affright of patents, Microsoft. He didn't ask for removal of his other code (perhaps he did in a private mail) but I think Alexandre also removed his other code because it is not worth to take any risks.
Recently we had a case which is a little bit similar. In that case someone wrote some dirty tests to figure out what Windows was doing and used that knowledge to write Wine code. The code in question was rejected but the guy also wasn't allowed to use his knowledge to submit a wine test.
I'm quite certain that you can't resubmit Hidenori's code because it was removed for a good reason. I'm not sure about tests though but I guess we don't want to take any risks with that either :( Wait for Alexandre his answer though.
Roderick