Re: Another simple reversing of OS X Foundation and CoreFoundation

[Graham Lee]

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to reinvent it. From "Copyleft: 
Pragmatic Idealism" (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pragmatic.html):

> Consider GNU Objective C. NeXT initially wanted to make this front end 
> proprietary; they proposed to release it as .o files, and let users link them 
> with the rest of GCC, thinking this might be a way around the GPL's 
> requirements. But our lawyer said that this would not evade the requirements, 
> that it was not allowed. And so they made the Objective C front end free 
> software.

The Free Software community has got where it is today by acknowledging the 
complex system of intellectual property protection as it exists, and using it 
in novel ways in order to extend freedoms to the users of its software. This 
has been done, as we see in the example above, by respecting and working with 
the legal systems in place, not by ignoring them or proclaiming that they do 
not apply. Sometimes it means that things we might want to do such as reverse 
engineering proprietary software should not be done. Other times it means that 
things other people might want to do such as incorporating free software into 
proprietary products should not be done. So there are sometimes downsides, and 
sometimes benefits: either way there is a clear set of values in play that lead 
to this game having certain rules.

You are, in ignoring these rules, ignoring the values that many of the people 
on this list share with the organisation that "owns", in its way, the GNUstep 
project. It is not a surprise that these people are, as a result, asking you to 
avoid repeating your mistakes or even calling for you to be removed from the 
mailing list. Please consider this.

Thanks,
Graham.

On 19 Jun 2013, at 14:18, Maxthon Chan <address@hidden> wrote:

> Given that:
> 
> 1) Apple did not patent Cocoa and/or their implementation of CoreFoundation, 
> and
> 2) GNUstep contains no Apple code
> 
> We will be good, as Apple have no reason to drag us into trouble. We are not 
> infringing any IP at all if that two conditions is met.
> 
> Just look at Mono which is a binary-compatible reimplementation of Microsoft 
> .net and they did not complain (and even eventually advertising it to some 
> extent).
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
>> On 2013年6月19日, at 21:05, address@hidden wrote:
>> 
>> Why do you want to transform GNUstep into something else ?
>> Why do you want to implement exactly the same way it's done by Apple ?
>> Maybe you are excited to discover technical details and I completely 
>> understand that but
>> your discoveries won't be implemented.
>> What you are trying to do I have already followed that path by trying to 
>> implement CoreGraphics
>> using reverse engineering and CFLite and it was fun to do but at the end it 
>> was useless for
>> legal reasons among other things.
>> I should have participated to GNUstep instead of loosing too much time on 
>> this project.
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> Gnustep-dev mailing list
>> address@hidden
>> https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnustep-dev
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Gnustep-dev mailing list
> address@hidden
> https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnustep-dev