5 ms·
This new Microsoft is open sourcing everything, maybe this own underlying implementation is on the way to be opened (maybe it's open somewhere already).
by talles 11y ago
This new Microsoft is open sourcing everything, maybe this own underlying implementation is on the way to be opened (maybe it's open somewhere already).
- pekk 11y agoThe new Microsoft is the same one that has been continuously and recently involved in copyright litigation. That didn't just go away overnight because they started a PR campaign.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- xorblurb 11y agoThis implementation is definitively a work derived from the NT kernel. If reimplementing and API propagates copyright, the only allowed licensing situation would be that MS releases the complete NT kernel under the GNU GPLv2 license. This is not going to happen. And this is not a too bad news, because this might give us leverage (by estoppel) if MS ever wants to litigate against free software on the theory that reimplementing API propagates copyright.
- atgreen 11y agoBut didn't they support Oracle's suit against Google's free software Dalvik on this very basis?
- munin 11y agois it a derived work of the NT kernel if it's contained in a separate loadable driver? my understanding is that's where this system call interface is contained, and as I understand it, you can have GPL NT drivers..?
- xorblurb 11y agoIt is not very probable that only public interfaces are used to implement this subsystem. Therefore, we can think that the special exception of the GPL that exclude major components of the OS would not apply. It also explicitly won't apply in the first place because MS is absolutely in the case: "that component itself (1) accompanies the executable (2)" (1) core NT kernel (2) Linux subsystem
- munin 11y agoI'm pretty sure you can use only public interfaces to implement this subsystem. You can do quite a lot to NT via the public interfaces, and it helps that the stuff in the linux subsystem basically only needs to work with itself (i.e. you don't need to send signals to Windows processes... but even if you needed to, you could use public interfaces to do that from the kernel...)
- icebraining 11y agoIf reimplementing and API propagates copyright, the only allowed licensing situation would be that MS releases the complete NT kernel under the GNU GPLv2 license. The GPL is not that expansive, it only extends to programs built upon GPL-licensed stuff, not for programs that just happen to have a GPL application running on them. A compilation of a covered work with other separate and independent works, which are not by their nature extensions of the covered work, and which are not combined with it such as to form a larger program, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an “aggregate” if the compilation and its resulting copyright are not used to limit the access or legal rights of the compilation's users beyond what the individual works permit. Inclusion of a covered work in an aggregate does not cause this License to apply to the other parts of the aggregate.
- xorblurb 11y agoI'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the hypothetical situation where an API itself is considered inheriting copyrights from the reference implementation -- similar to what Oracle argued about Java and Android.
- icebraining 11y agoEven if it was, the NT kernel wouldn't be affected, that's my point; only the translation layer would be.