31 Jan
2006
31 Jan
'06
10:28 a.m.
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