Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ark1!nems!mimsy!tove.umd.edu!steveg From: steveg@tove.umd.edu (Steve Green) Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss Subject: Re: Why I do not support GNU Message-ID: <20224@mimsy.umd.edu> Date: 18 Oct 89 00:32:50 GMT References: <8910160520.AA01740@sugar-bombs.ai.mit.edu> <30999@news.Think.COM> Sender: nobody@mimsy.umd.edu Reply-To: steveg@tove.umd.edu (Steve Green) Distribution: gnu Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Lines: 39 In article <30999@news.Think.COM> barmar@kulla (Barry Margolin) writes: >In article nelson@clutx.clarkson.edu writes: >>True, but Apple wants it the other way. They want the ideas behind the >>software (the "look and feel") to be protectable. > >I'm not a big fan of "look and feel" copyrights, but I think I can >appreciate their attitude, and that's not how I understand look and >feel copyrights. Vi and Emacs (ignoring the extension capabilities) >are implementations of the same general idea (visual text editing), >but they are distinguished by their look and feel. SunTools is a >workstation window manager, but it looks and feels very different from >Apple's Macintosh window manager, and (as far as I know) Apple has no >beef with them; they both implement the same operations, but in a >different style. Apple's and Lotus's complaints are with developers >who effectively took snapshots of their applications' displays. Well, it seems that Apples lawsuit is based on the fact that Microsoft licensed the ability to develop a windowing system that, among other things, did not have overlaping windows. If it were not for that licensing agreement, I dont believe that there would be a suit today. As things stand today, the entire suit has been shaved down to just that issue. This leads me to my comments... 1. I dont approve of the Apple suit as it stands today. If a company took a snapshot of another company's package, and then tried to market the copy, then thats another story. The original company should be protected. 2. In the file called "APPLE", which comes with gnumacs, it is said.. "Apple claims the power to stop people from writing any program that works even vaguely like a Macintosh." This is REALLY stretching things. I dont approve of FSF lying inorder to create hate. [...] > >barmar@think.com >{uunet,harvard}!think!barmar -- -steveg@tove.umd.edu ..uunet!tove.umd.edu!steveg "Ignore the message: 'ld warning: file /tmp/kernAAAa06386 has no relocation information' if it appears."