Comment by 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.
> So, if I sing a song with lyrics "Billie Jean is not my lover"...
Please stop talking about music, because it just further confuses your thinking about software copyright.
> What does "a Windows NT kernel" mean?
I mean the plain understanding of "Windows NT Kernel". See wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Windows_NT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_(operating_system)