[wp-hackers] Re: Removal Of Over 200 Themes?

[Lynne Pope]

2008/12/13 Vladimir Kolesnikov <vladimir at sjinks.org.ua>

> Lynne Pope writes:
>
>> 2008/12/13 Matt <speedboxer at gmail.com>
>>
>> There is still disagreement, even within the FSF, over whether a simple
>> API
>> call creates a derivative work.
>>
>>
> Please correct me if I am mistaken, but does it mean that there can be no
> *free* (as in freedom) products for Windows? Because any Windows app has to
> call Windows API. But that does not mean that the calling application is
> derivative work from Windows. And it uses license different from that
> Windows does.
>

Microsoft licenses its IP in really convoluted ways. Some is free to use,
some is not, some have really weird requirements. There is a general
overview here: http://www.microsoft.com/iplicensing/FAQInformation.aspx

Basically though, Microsoft is the same as any software copyright holder -
they can license their own work however they choose and can make it
available for others to use and/or develop on under any terms they choose.

There are apps that use a Microsoft API and that are licensed LGPL (probably
some GPL ones too - I just can't recall any at the moment) but its the code
that runs on top of the Microsoft API that is LGPL, not the API itself.

The Microsoft example, though, is a really good one for the argument that
simply hooking into an API does not, in itself, create derivative work.
(This is the position that is taken by the Mambo CMS project too - which is
GPL version 2).

Lynne