Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!apple!desnoyer
From: desnoyer@Apple.COM (Peter Desnoyers)
Newsgroups: gnu.gcc
Subject: Re: GNU's not GNU...
Message-ID: <28723@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 10 Apr 89 18:09:37 GMT
References: <28354@apple.Apple.COM> <8158@polya.Stanford.EDU> <22643@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <Apr.8.15.48.48.1989.17519@topaz.rutgers.edu> <23295@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <292@odi.UUCP>
Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA
Lines: 14

In article <292@odi.UUCP> dlw@odi.UUCP (Dan Weinreb) writes:
>
>One might worry that if Apple and Lotus win, the *next* step might be
>to try to extend things even further, in such a way that abstract
>specifications such as a "make" manual would cause anything that
>implemented said spec to be protectable by copyright law.

For obvious reasons, I'm not going to comment on the Apple lawsuit.
However, I will point out that the tack above has been tried by others
(I think Adobe and PostScript, for a recent example) and there is
precedent that a "computer language", whatever that is, is not
copyrightable. 

				Peter Desnoyers