Comment by bb88

7 years ago

> If I learn a pop song, and sing it and accompany myself on the piano, and someone else transcribes it,

I hate bad analogies. A bad analogy just confuses the issue.

There's one and exactly one song called "Billie Jean", which was written, composed, and performed by Michael Jackson.

There are however a thousand different works relating the history of Michael Jackson's work with Quincy Jones in producing the song "Billie Jean" for the album Thriller.

So is there one and exactly one implementation of a Windows NT kernel, or is there a possibility there could be many different types of Windows NT kernel implementations?

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bb88

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geofft  7 years ago

So, if I sing a song with lyrics "Billie Jean is not my lover" with melody re-re-do-la-re-re-do-la, is it a different song because it was recorded by me? It is pretty clear in copyright law that my recording would infringe Michael Jackson's song.

What does "a Windows NT kernel" mean? Exposes the same interface? (Does Linux + WINE count?) Operates internally in the same way?

Maybe a better example is UNIX. Linux offers the same conceptual interface, but is neither binary-compatible with UNIX nor is implemented the same way. It is not UNIX, and does not infringe. NT, FreeBSD, and Solaris all have / had compatibility interfaces for Linux that are binary-compatible but wildly different internally. They also do not infringe. And no "clean-room" work was necessary to reach this state.