On 05 May 2005 20:27:55 -0400
"Nathan J. Williams" <nathanw@wasabisystems.com> wrote:

> If using ideas from A in B always causes B to be a derivative work of
> A, then nobody who has knowledge of GPL'd code can, from a paranoid
> perspective, ever produce code that they can prove is not a
> GPL-derivative work.

"Knowledge of" and "knowledge derived from" are not the same.  I have
knowledge of how Paul Mackerras wrote the mace driver for Linux on Apple
hardware. I haven't learned anything from it, unless Dave Huang based
his driver code on it, and from the archives it appears he did not, nor
are they similiar.  There is enough documentation available from AMD to
learn what Dave did, and I've gone through it and verified everything he
did (nice work, by the way, I learned a lot). There is also non-licensed
documentation on the CHRP standard that explains dbdma in detail. 
Therefore, the mc* macppc driver is not derived from GPL code.

The courts have regularly acknowledged literary material may have
similarities and overlap extensively without one being derived or
copied from the other.  This is because the products were created
independently while utilizing the same common knowledge.  Your
example, that of the ADB keyboard, is the exact opposite.  There is one
and only one source of knowledge about that keyboard.  You can not
derive that knowledge independently of Apple's code.

Your interpretation of "derived" means that if I "or" several bits on
separate lines instead of on one line as in the code I have viewed, it
is not "derived," even if I have no way of knowing why I should do this
other than I saw it in the original code.

> It has to be a secret to be a trade secret. Publishing the source
> under a copyright license is entirely not sufficent for maintaining a
> trade secret.

Not according to the DMCA.  All it has to be is something that the
company uses while doing commerce that would cause a loss of
competitiveness if another company obtained that information.  The
information from Apple was not released as public domain.  If NetBSD
uses knowledge gained from APSL code that then causes Apple to lose
sales of OS X, and NetBSD is not complying with the APSL, Apple can sue
under the DMCA, copyright law not-withstanding (der Mouse ought to
appreciate that last clause).  The DMCA does trump copyright law; that
is one of the reasons why it was written.

> > You're advocating a position that you are not offering legal
> > means to defend.  Ask Wasabi Systems' legal department if they
> > are comfortable with your position and how you obtain information
> > that you then incorporate into a product they offer in competition
> > with Red Hat, and also whether they are willing to go to court with
> > your position.
> 
> Been there, done that. Wasabi Systems looks at Linux (and other OSS)
> code all the time.

Make sure your clients know this.

tim