[Haskell-cafe] containers license issue

[Ketil Malde]

Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org> writes:

> Niklas Larsson <metaniklas at gmail.com> wrote:
>>2012/12/15 Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>:
>>> Only if Tanenbaum documented the internal behavior of Linux before
>>> it was written.

>>Tannenbaum wrote Minix, the operating system that Linus used (and
>>hacked on) before he did Linux. Minix contained lots of features that
>>was reimplemented in Linux.

> Ah, Minix isn't documentation.  And it has a radically different
> architecture

The point is that Linux read the source code to Minix before
implementing similar things - quite likely using the same algorithms,
for instance.  So if containers is a "translation" of FXT, then surely
Linux is a "translation" of Minix.

> That makes a successful lawsuit unlikely 

The point of the point is that neither of these are translations of
literary works, there is no precedence for considering them as such, and
that reading somebody's work (whether literary or source code) before
writing one's own does not imply that the 'somebody' will hold any
rights to the subsequent work.

"Translations" in software is what compilers do, not reimplementing
specific algorithms.

> it'll never go to court, so there isn't an infringement.  

Wot?

-k