Re: Unibyte characters, strings, and buffers

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> My goal is not to convince you to do something you don't want to.
>
> The main issue here, at least for me, is not whether Mr. X wants to
> describe an existing implementation -- we obviously cannot do anything
> if he doesn't, no matter what are his reasons.  The main issue here
> is, once Mr. X _did_ describe such an implementation, is it OK for
> someone else, who is not familiar with the actual code, to
> re-implement it from scratch, and then submit it to Emacs as their
> own, under assigned copyright.  My conclusion from everything I know
> and read is that YES, it is OK.
>
> IOW, I'd like to avoid the situation where others here might become
> intimidated by what you wrote in a broader sense, and will as result
> refrain from participating in discussions that reveal details of other
> implementations, or from assigning their code written based on those
> discussions.  That would cause some real damage to Emacs.

Nobody claimed that the broken copyright system does not lead to a whole
lot of real damage to a whole lot of software development.

<URL:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequence,_structure_and_organization>
may be somewhat instructional about some current court practice in the
U.S.A.  Please note that Oracle/Google ruling is unfortunately somewhat
atypical and on appeal (appeal hearing was in December)
<URL:http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/googles-copyright-win-against-oracle-is-in-danger-on-appeal/>
and that the FSF would not have been in a position to pay the kind of
legal expenses incurred here.

-- 
David Kastrup