Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: Never ever use word BitKeeper if Larry does not like you | From | Florian Weimer <> | Date | Fri, 14 Mar 2003 22:48:55 +0100 |
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Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com> writes:
> Thus, even to have an open source BK export tool requires that key > BK algorithms be open sourced.
You can't "open source" algorithms. Unpatented algorithms are always free to use.
It's sufficient if somebody looks at the algorithms employed by BK and documents them in plain English at a very abstract level. (Reading your properly licensed copy of the BK source code and writing down your thoughts can't be illegal, can it?) Somebody else can go ahead and implement them, unencumbered by the BK copyright and BK license.
(This is not legal advice, it's just the way it is done in the industry if you have to reverse-engineer the product of a competitor for interoperability reasons.) - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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