Dynamic and Static Linking

[David Johnson]

On Tue, 04 Apr 2000, Martin Konold wrote:
> Ok, imagine a simple case: MS asks you to not use any of their components
> in order to figure out how their file formats are working. Are you (maybe
> you are a GPL Office Suite developer) accepting this?! 

It was late last night when I replied to this, and I realized later
what bothered me about Martin's examples.

One should strive to respect the author's wishes with regards to their
OWN software. It's their property. But their wishes have little
influence upon MY property, namely my copy of their software.

In respect to the GPL, the right to dynamically link to a library could
very well be one of the rights of copyright held by the author. Then
again, it might not be. I'm not so sure. If it does belong to the
author, then their wishes are very relevant. Since I really don't know
if it isn't, I will give the benefit of the doubt to the author.

But in the case of MS and their components, I already have the right to
reverse engineer by own copies of software. Their wish for me not to do
so is irrelevant.

-- 
David Johnson...
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