ASF spec licensing issues

[Cristian Tibirna]

On Saturday, 20 July 2002 13:48, Shane Wright wrote:
> The point is, am I reading this wrong?  Is it legal to develop the plugin?
> Alternatively, would it have been legal if I hadn't read the spec and just
> based it purely on xine's ASF/WMV code?

My worthless 680 romanian lei (roughly 2 US cents or 10 canadian... :)

No matter how _you_ read it, no matter how honestly well intentioned you are, 
to me it is pretty clear that the license tries to deny possibility of 
developing an open source asf software based on their published spec. 

Thus, in my books, no matter what interpretation _you_ give to the license, as 
long as you'll come with an open source implementation (or even touch open 
source while developing - read: not wanting to buy hefty expensive 
development tools from them) they'll do all to frame your work as illegal, 
bending the provisions of the license in their favor. That, unless you have a 
lawyer budget bigger than theirs, of course...

Ugly world...

-- 
Cristian Tibirna .. tibirna at sympatico.ca
PhD student .. ctibirna at giref.ulaval.ca .. www.giref.ulaval.ca/~ctibirna
KDE developer .. tibirna at kde.org .. www.kde.org