At 17:08 01/11/99 -0500, Andy Kunz wrote:
>At 11:11 AM 1/11/99 -0800, you wrote:
>>At 15:58 01/11/99 +0200, Tjaart van der Walt wrote:
>>>I'm quite sure it would be illegal to write some
>>>driver to hook the SX Key into MPLAB. Coming to
>>>think about it - I have never had the Scenix IDE
>>>drop down on me, but MPLAB falls over on a daily
>>>basis. Grrrrrrrr.
>>
>>really? why would it be a violation of copyright (or any other law) to
>>write and sell an addition or enhancement to any program (or hardware
>>device)? is it then a violation of copyright if a program uses undocumented
>>features of a commercial operating system (i believe this is common in the
>>windows world, and it seems to me to be a variation of the case in question)?
>
>The patent system is based upon this principle.

sorry, i don't understand upon which principle and how this relates to the
question.

>However, note that if you
>are not careful you could end up owing a royalty for inadvertently using
>patented / copyrighted portions.

how can an unpublished protocol (i guess that's been the original issue
here) be copyrighted or patented?

>Check to see what's copyrighted and patented in the system you clone.

as far as i understood, it was not about cloning, it was about adding, like
adding a scenix driver to mplab or adding a dos- or unix-interface to drive
the picstart+. in neither case there seems to be anything published about
the respective interfaces, so i don't understand how the interface could be
copyrighted.

ge