Legal matters, GNUStep
ToddBlanchard wrote:
The only bits of the thing not open are the cocoa apis - basically NextStep - an insanely portable UI layer.
The word "open" is basically vague, vapid, and meaningless, in this context. Let's talk concepts of business law, as they concern software.
copyrights: Any significant creative work, such as a software codebase, gives rise to a bundle of abstract legal rights called "copyright", inherent in the act of creation. A copyright is a limited monopoly over possession, use, redistribution, and creation of derivative works based on any instance of the covered creative work. Copyright may be transferred or sold to another person through a specific type of written conveyance. Lawful receipt of an instance of the creative work (e.g., purchase or download of a copy of a piece of software) doesn't give you ownership of the abstract property right (the copyright), but rather a licence to certain rights but not others. Absent an explicit licence grant (which by the Copyright Act may be oral, in writing, or by the conduct of the parties), a default licensing provison (per statute) applies. The default licence for software is of the sort software people term "proprietary", i.e., it includes no right to redistribute or create derivative works.
Apple Computer, Inc. owns copyright over a number of codebases that implement its version (descended from NeXT's) of the OpenStep application interface. (I note with amusement that your term for this, "API", is a Microsoft-ism.) Unlike patents, discussed next, copyrights do not stand in the way of independent third-party implementations of a given technique. In theory, copyrights expire after a certain number of years (and might again, if Congress stops taking all of its orders from Hollywood).
patents: A patent is another bundle of abstract legal rights, covering not a creative work but rather am invention/technique/algorithm. Thus, during its term it bars deployment or even development of artifacts that use the covered technique in any way, regardless of who created them or how independent they might be of prior implementations. Accordingly, patent terms are relatively short (since their effect is so broad). Apple Computer, Inc. is known to own quite a few patents over software techniques related to program interfaces and imaging algorithms used in OS X. I believe it is on record as granting royalty-free rights to its patents for any implementation of the OpenStep specification published late in the history of NeXT, Inc.
trade secrets: Inventions kept confidential within a business may be privileged against disclosure by knowledgeable insiders if they meet certain criteria about its nature (exclusivity of knowledge, degree of caution against disclosure, effort/money spent developing it, ease by which outsiders might independently discover it). The information must also provably have either actual or potential commercial value. The (state only) law covering trade secrets covers misappropriation only, making it a serious tort.
I mention trade secret law only for completeness: It's probably relevant only to Apple insiders of various sorts.
trademarks: Trademarks are a different category, and are an abstract, limited legal monopoly over words, names, symbols, or devices used by manufacturers of goods and providers of services to identify their goods and services, and to distinguish their goods and services from goods manufactured and sold by others. The monopoly must be paid for (unlike copyrights, but like patents). It can be renewed. The trademark must be continually used integrally to a business, and the monopoly extends only within the same industry or class of goods. Unlike copyright or patents, it covers only the name or characteristic appearance of the covered product (being a monopoly over commercial product identity, only). Goods that for whatever reason can be readily distinguished from the covered goods are not encumbered.
So, getting back to your intellectually sloppy bit about things being "open" or not: Quite a number of pieces of OS X (and NeXTStep before it) are implemented under copyright licences that make that particular software proprietary. (Please see my other post for the approximate meaning of the word "proprietary" in the software context.) Many of the algorithms thus implemented are also encumbered by Apple patents, which are as noted a more-significant obstacle: If, hypothetically, Apple were to issue an instance of those codebases under an open-source licence (say, the BSD licence), the end-result would still be proprietary as long as the patent restrictions prevented free exercise of the rights granted in that licence.
There has been an attempt to clone it - GnuStep. But those people are mentally ill and completely impractical. Their insistence on living on DisplayGhostscript is obsessive and crippling. Suggest that maybe they ought to rewrite the graphics prims using OpenGL (at least its pretty much everywhere) and they freak.
Not being completely ignorant in such matters, I'm acutely aware that OpenGL is heavily covered by patents registered by SGI, which were recently purchased from SGI by one Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Washington. Were you ignorant of this rather crucial fact, or were you merely choosing to not mention it for some reason?
Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com
