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

15 Jul 1998 17:37:41 -0700
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
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To: "Geoffrey Noer" <[email-masked]>,
        "Robin Crampton" <[email-masked]>, <[email-masked]>,
        <[email-masked]>, "Larry Hall" <[email-masked]>

I'm a little confused why we can't just use the include files that come with
the Platform SDK from Microsoft.  They seem to work fine using Mikey's
link-compat distribution, which includes patches to get them to work.  Since
everyone can download the Platform SDK from MS directly, there would be no
reason to redistribute MS's "intellectual property."  All we would have to
do is distribute the patch files to make them work with Cygwin32.  If anyone
is concerned that "standard" patch files contain a certain amount of the
original files I'm sure we could come up with a patch program that does not
rely on ANY original text but rather uses offsets to delete and add text.
We could also include a checksum on the original in the patch to make sure
we are patching the right "version."  Am I missing something here?  (I admit
that I did not read MS's "license" in the Platform SDK so don't know if they
prohibit this, so take it easy on me!).

Fred Reimer
Eclipsys Corporation

-----Original Message-----
From: Larry Hall <[email-masked]>
To: Geoffrey Noer <[email-masked]>; Robin Crampton
<[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>
Date: Wednesday, July 15, 1998 2:12 AM
Subject: Re: To whom do we contribute API header/

>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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