From: Casper Hornstrup
I'd like to put this amendment to the IP policy to a vote, but first let's start with the 7 day discussion period.
"If an API or a particular behaviour of an API which is part of the Windows(R) operating system is not publicly documented by Microsoft, then the API or the particular behaviour of the API may only be implemented in ReactOS if there is documentation of published software which depend on the API or the particular behaviour of the API, and which is not only distributed with the Windows(R) operating system. The documentation must be available in the repository."
I argue that the more ReactOS differ from Windows, the harder it will be to prove that ReactOS is a derivative work of Windows.
In general, I agree with you, but I do have 2 remarks:
1) What about Internet Explorer? According to your proposal, we can't implement an API if IE is the only app we find that depends on it. Personally, I'd rather use Firefox anyway, but there is some stuff out there that depends on IE.
2) Should this be limited to APIs or include undocumented data structures too? An example I ran into last night: KPRCB. We know it's out there, some of the fields are listed (e.g. by Probert) but I couldn't find any "official" documentation.
GvG