RMS on OpenMotif

[David Johnson]

On Mon, 21 Aug 2000, you wrote:

> For terms not defined in the license (such as "operating system"), it would
> be easy for whoever brought the lawsuit to argue that using the term
> according to precedent -- i.e., as in the Microsoft vs. US case, which would
> be everything on the CD from the kernel, to the DLLs of IE, to the IE app
> itself -- rather than according to random documents.

It is also equally valid to use the English dictionary and the context
in which the precedent was made. In the Caldera suit, the whole point
of the suer was to show that Windows95 as a whole was not the operating
system, but just the underlying DOS. The MS v US case used the term in
an entirely different context. My dictionary defines "operating
system" as: "software that controls the operation of a computer and
directs the processing of programs". The kernel and a few bits of
infrastructure around it are sufficient to meet this definition. But
even if you have to use the common usage of the term, the common usage
will not be defined by the Windows98 user, but by the typical user of
Unix (since that is the platform for Motif), who would have a radically
different perception of what an OS is.

-- 
David Johnson
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