Subject: Re: To whom do we contribute API header/
From: [email-masked] (Larry Hall)

14 Jul 1998 22:26:06 -0700
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
References: <[email-masked]>
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To: Geoffrey Noer <[email-masked]>, Robin Crampton <[email-masked]>,
        [email-masked], [email-masked]

At 07:48 AM 7/13/98 +0000, Geoffrey Noer wrote:
>On Fri, Jul 10, 1998 at 11:05:58AM +0000, Robin Crampton wrote:
>[...]
>> How different do the cygwin32 Windows header files have to be from   
>> Microsofts to not infringe copyright, or whatever?  Can we just strip out   
>> all the comments and expand all the typedefs (well, obviously not all the   
>> typedefs, just the simple ones such as DWORD) ?  Do we even need to do   
>> that?  I imagine it's hard to enforce copyright on data structure   
>> definitions and function prototypes.
>
>To the best of my knowledge, all of our Win32 headers were generated
>by looking at documentation and then adding equivalent definitions in
>ours.  It is not ok to copy sections from Microsoft headers into ours.
>I'll try to investigate this issue some more and send additional mail
>if there's anything more to say...
>
>> I've got my-mmsystem.h which I'll gladly donate, but at the moment it's   
>> just Microsofts with my hacks.  
>
>That's not going to work I'm afraid.
>

Perhaps this does need some clarification then.  You mentioned that the Win32
headers were generated by looking at "documentation" and then adding 
"equivalent" definitions.  What documentation is this and how "equivalent"
is equivalent?  I don't want to get into too much legalese but if I were 
going to try to do some of this, I would probably consult MSDN for 
documentation to start or some other good Win32 source, assuming I was 
going to ignore the headers themselves in VC++.  It seems highly likely to 
me that any source I choose is going to be from MS.  So is it OK to look at
documentation like this?  Personally, I don't see that much difference 
between the "cut-and-paste" operations that come from this activity and 
that which would be involved with using the headers "directly" but I get 
the impression that I'm missing some important point in this regard.  Geoff,
can you clarify that point for me/us?

Larry Hall                              [email-masked]
RFK Partners, Inc.                      (781) 239-1053
8 Grove Street                          (781) 239-1655 - FAX
Wellesley, MA  02181                    http://www.rfk.com
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