[Coco] FPGA 63x09

[jdaggett at gate.net]

good grief. Unless you are a lawyer giving me free advice then I may 
consider what you have stated. As I have declared before I do not care to 
get into a debate on copyright laws here. Been there and have done that 
before on this forum. 

If you have read before I have started coding a 6309 processor and not a 
HC11 processor.

end of subject.

james

On 27 Mar 2009 at 23:52, Jeff Teunissen wrote:

> jdaggett at gate.net wrote:
> > Jeff 
> > 
> > This is not the time I choose to argue this point as for now nothing
> > has been done so it is mute point as to what you interpret as to
> > what I interpret.
> 
> It was just a friendly warning against starting a project on the wrong
> foundation (that is, one that isn't unlikely to screw you later) since
> in many ways you wouldn't be able to switch without starting over, see
> below.
> 
> > Even if I were to use his code as a template, a 6309 code would be
> > radically enough different that copyright infrrengements will more
> > than likely be a mute point. I envision that half if not more of his
> > code would change. Also there are a few things that I would do
> > slightly different to make copyright issues a mute point. 
> 
> Sorry, the point is not moot. You can change EVERY single line and
> still infringe copyright, _especially_ with such "template" use.
> 
> Copyright does not apply at all to the so-called "functional aspects"
> of a program -- that is, the stuff that is required to perform a task.
> If any particular job can be performed optimally only by a specific
> method, no code that exactly implements that method is, or can be (at
> least in the US), covered by copyright.
> 
> What IS subject to (and protected by) copyright is the parts of a
> program that can be considered "speech"; the specifics of how it is
> put together, the style in which the program's components are
> arranged, the comments (if any), all the stuff that programmers can
> use to describe the programmer's intent and what the code _means_ (as
> opposed to just what it _does_, which copyright doesn't give a crap
> about).
> 
> By starting with someone else's design (even if you don't actually
> copy a damn thing directly!), you open the door to copyright
> infringement, because the meaning of the original code doesn't change
> when you add new code. Even if you were to incrementally rewrite until
> nothing of the original code is left, unless you completely change the
> design as well, it's still a derivative work...and if you were going
> to do that, what was the point in using the original code in the first
> place?
> 
> Some years back, George Harrison was sued for copyright infringement
> over a song, "My Sweet Lord", that he had written on his own. Harrison
> was found by a jury to have "unconsciously" copied a small part (just
> a few notes) of the Shirelles' song "He's So Fine", because that song
> had been getting radio play a short time before Harrison wrote "My
> Sweet Lord".
> 
> It sucks, but that's also how it is with computers. Ironically,
> because of the old programming languages, many of which were much less
> expressive than today's funky stuff like Perl and Python, there's a
> lot of old code out there with very little "speech" in it because all
> the programmer could do was tell the compiler/interpreter what to do.
> With today's languages (Perl being an extreme example), two
> programmers might do the same task in *radically* different ways and
> both methods could well be optimal (or at least irreducible).
> 
> I understand that you might like the GM HC11 design better than some
> other one, but if you are explicitly not allowed to distribute changes
> (and in GM's case, you can't even give someone UNCHANGED source) you
> are the only guy ALLOWED to work on the project...and the rest of us
> are basically screwed if you got hit by a bus, because no one could
> take over for something like the next 94 years.
> 
> And aside from you having been hit by a bus, that would really suck.
> 
> 
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