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> The lack of commercial purpose of ReactOS (and Wine) and it's primary goal of interoperability So, if ReactOS ever becomes useful, it will be illegal to use

• ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  Not necessarily. It might be problematic for ReactOS to try to market their software commercially, but not for someone downloading it to use it commercially. (The latter of which is governed solely by ReactOS' own license, which takes no issue with that.) The first thing to understand about fair use is that it applies to copyright infringement, so first, someone has to complain about the infringement and then you utilize fair use as a defense. And second, that fair use has some guidelines/rules to test whether or not fair use should apply, but they are open to some interpretation. So it wouldn't be "illegal" to commercialize ReactOS... but it'd probably make it a lot harder for ReactOS to use fair use as a shield going forward, because it would weaken their case on one of the pillars of the fair use test.
  • R0b0t1 6y ago
    Reverse engineering for interoperability is protected with no routes to contest if done with a clean room reimplementation. If you physically own the item and are using it you are even more protected (think fixing your own tractor). Unfortunately I think some lower courts have some messed up decisions or companies are trying to bully others with threats of suit. For example, some medical coding systems have copyrighted codes that are claimed to require a license and you can not install a system to cooperate with these. Except... this has already been decided, and you can.