Dear Listers,
We have been developing a software package based on CORBA standard for some time which will allow for real time communication between distributed control objects. This will run on a variety of operating platforms. We seem to have come to a stage where we are considering making it available on internet for others. We have patterned the API on one commercial software however all the implementation is our own based on OSS products like mico and gnu-win32 etc. I would like to know whether we would be violating any copyrights since our API is patterned on a commercial product?

Thanks,

- Prabhat Ranjan

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Dr. Prabhat Ranjan email: [email protected]
Inst. for Plasma Research Phone: 079-2864690,2864023
Bhat, Gandhinagar(Gujarat)
382428 fax: 079-2864310
India
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Are you aware that OMG is preparing a new standard
for CORBA-based publish/subscribe and that the real-time community is seeking for it to be acceptable for their uses?

Doug

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Good question. IMHO .. as long as you don't link some parts of the GNU stuff into your API ... you should expect no problems.

Regards

Armin Steinhoff

 

List Management Account wrote:

> . I would like to know whether we would be
> >violating any copyrights since our API is patterned on a commercial
> >product?
>
> Good question. IMHO .. as long as you don't link some parts of the GNU stuff
> into your API ... you should expect no problems.

A) I think he was meaning copyright problems due to the fact that thier product (although implemented from scratch) has been STYLED along the lines of a commercial. A sort of look and feel from a programmers point of view. Good question indeed, but there are a lot of precedents, as a lot of libraries and interfaces are made to look like compatible products. There are humble examples (various implementations of the veritable BGI), and mamouth examples (WINE).

I think people say that they make it look the same for compatibility.

B) Comments on GNU are misleading, and wrong. SOME GNU libraries, if linked in to your app, would require that you release your source code (but I have the impression that is what they had in mind anyway), other libraries do not.
Basically speaking, standard libraries such as libc do not have this requirements, wheras special libraries that implement complete subsystems (the sort you have to pay licences for with commercial products) do require source
code release. Check www.gnu.org and the licence with the library. You are unlikely to be using any special GNU libraries for your application anyway, so there is probably no problem. Note also that many libraries designed for GNUish environments are not GPLed at all, the authors preffering an alternative license. In fact most of the Corba stuff I have seen around is under non GPL licences such as BSD.