Re: Minimalist GNUstep possible?

[Nicola Pero]

> Hi,
>
> So you see no legal impediements in proceeding?  No patents, no  
> royalties, no rules in any agreement?
>
> Would you say it is like coming up with a Java implementation 10 -  
> 12 years ago? Did the rules for the Java technology, the JDK,  
> disallow reverse-engineering? If they did, we are OK, and there are  
> several competing “Java” implementations.
>
> Of course, we need only the public APIs specs for our work. But  
> these may be governed by their web site’s terms of use, no. Then is  
> it sufficient to rename the classes with a common project-related  
> prefix?
>
> What bout the SDK rules against reverse-engineering? Do they affect  
> our task?
> Documents that should be analyzed include the iPhone SDK Agreement  
> and the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement.
>
> But since the XMLVM project has proven that a Java version of Cocoa- 
> Touch is legal, an Objective-C version should be clean as well, no?
>
> There is also an Open-Source project which implements some of the  
> UIKit while only adding a prefix to the file and type names. We have  
> contacted the leader to seek his advice on the legality of the  
> endeavor
Consulting with a lawyer is certainly a good idea, but as far as I  
know, nobody can stop you implementing a public API from scratch.  If  
your code is written from scratch,
you own the copyright for the new code.  APIs can't be copyrighted.

Quite a number of existing open source projects (Wine, Samba, GNUstep  
itself, etc) provide alternative, free implementations of APIs which  
were originally implemented
only in proprietary software.  None of the original proprietary  
software companies has ever had any particular luck in stopping  
these.  They usually try to change the APIs
regularly to break compatibility.

If you still feel threatened by the Apple "agreements" you should  
probably consult a lawyer.  But, I haven't signed any agreement and I  
can find the UIKit API documentation
on the public, open Apple web site.  You don't need any agreement to  
get that API.  So I don't see what the relevance of the "iPhone SDK  
Agreement" etc. is to this.  It's not
like you've been given secret information and you agreed not to reveal  
it.  It's public documentation describing the public interface for  
programming some computer devices
sold in millions or billions of pieces to the general public.  I don't  
really see how this would be any different from, eg, Wine implementing  
the Windows API to run Windows
programs on other operating systems (or implementing programs using  
the Windows API on other systems), or GNUstep implementing the Cocoa  
API.  These are public APIs
and some people of good will (but sometime competitor companies!)  
wrote alternative implementations. :-)

And there's no need to change the class names.  Cross-compatibility is  
helped if you just use the same class names! :-)

Thanks