Zeo Developer Terms of Use

[Chris Travers]

On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 3:31 PM, John Cowan <cowan at mercury.ccil.org> wrote:
> Chris Travers scripsit:
>
>> I guess where I differ is that I don't see this as something that
>> Microsoft could probably restrict using only copyright law even if
>> they wanted to.
>
> No, but they don't have to: you only get Windows development libraries
> under a contract with Microsoft anyhow.  You could reverse engineer them,
> as Wine does, of course.
>
But the EULA is a contract, right?  And the SDK's don't actually
contain libraries as often as they do machine-readible interface
specifications (like header files).  So Microsoft COULD try to
distribute interface specifications only to those which agree not to
build free/open source software (and indeed they tried to do this at
one point).

However, if someone built a program that did not require use of
redistributable libraries (i.e. only linked to libraries distributed
with Windows) in violation of that license agreement, wouldn't that be
limited to a contract claim and wouldn't copyright arguments be
irrelevant?

This is relevant because the GPL limits itself to cases where the
licensee needs copyright permission to proceed.  Just because
proprietary software companies might have contracts forbidding
something doesn't make it a copyright issue, does it?  If it's not
something you need copyright permission to do, then the GPL
automatically allows you to do it, regardless of what RMS might say,
correct?  Or am I misunderstanding something?

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers