Re: merge of bouyer-socketcan

[christos%astron.com@localhost (Christos Zoulas)]

In article <20170603102405.GA3037%antioche.eu.org@localhost>,
Manuel Bouyer  <bouyer%antioche.eu.org@localhost> wrote:
>On Sat, Jun 03, 2017 at 08:03:40PM +1000, Darren Reed wrote:
>> On 18/05/2017 9:30 PM, Manuel Bouyer wrote:
>> > ...
>> > I'd like to merge the bouyer-socketcan branch to HEAD in the next few
>> > days (hopefully early next week, or maybe sunday), unless someone objects
>> > to the idea of a socketcan implementation in NetBSD.
>> >
>> > CAN stands for Controller Area Network, a broadcast network used
>> > in automation and automotive fields. For example, the NMEA2000 standard
>> > developped for marine devices uses a CAN network as the link layer.
>> >
>> > This is an implementation of the linux socketcan API:
>> > https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/networking/can.txt
>> > you can also see can(4) in the branch.
>> >
>> ...
>> 
>> As per the Google-Oracle Java fight in court whereupon APIs
>> were deemedas being copyright-able, it would seem to me that
>> implementing a Linuxcompatible interface that is GPL without
>> making the copy also GPL wouldbe a copyright violation of
>> the original work.Do you have permission from the original
>> authors to implement a non-GPL artifact of their interfaces?
>
>I though only the implementation was copyrighted. I wrote the code
>from the can.txt file, which doesn't have any reference to GPL.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google,_Inc.
   Google's use of the API's was deemed fair use. Much of the lawsuit
   was to determine if the implementation was copied too.
2. These kinds of text specifications are not under the GPL explicitly
   to allow alternative commercial and opensource implementations in
   order to foster interoperability.
3. It would set a horrible precedence for a GPL entity to fight against
   other opensource entities for re-implementing API's. There is nothing
   to be gained but lawyer fees and bad blood.

christos