Message-ID: <39FD693D.7B3E8893@idb.hist.no>
Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2000 13:27:41 +0100
From: Helge Hafting <helgehaf@idb.hist.no>
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: GPL Question
In-Reply-To: <E13pGUS-0004pj-00@the-village.bc.nu>
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Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org

Alan Cox wrote:
> 
> >       If the answer to this is "yes", then Microsoft should own some rights to
> > every piece of software that uses the Windows API.
> 
> As US copyright law stands of the last few days Microsoft are entitled to
> require a magic constant is passed in one register to 'unlock' an API syscall.
> If you disassemble code to find that constant you could be jailed.

Anyone figuring out such a constant could post it anonymously on some
website/newsgroup.  Anybody abusing the constant later, including the
real discoverer, can simply claim they got it from that anonymous
sensation
posting.  It is now common knowledge.  No reverse engineering here...

Helge Hafting
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