Re: How to challenge a GCC patch?

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

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"J-P. Rosen" <rosen@adalog.fr> wrote in message 
news:sjes64$79r$1@dont-email.me...
> Le 02/10/2021 à 11:14, Randy Brukardt a écrit :
>>> My memory is that all "interesting" part of the standard was deliberatly
>>> put as comments in the specification, precisely to circumvent the ISO
>>> copyright, and allow the use of ASIS without paying an outrageous price 
>>> to
>>> ISO.
>> I don't see how using comments helps anything. The Oracle case makes it
>> pretty clear an API iteself can be covered by a copyright, and surely the
>> comments are covered by the copyright. And the ISO version has no 
>> copyright
>> statement other than the usual "All rights reserved".
>
> 1) It seems to me that you are confusing the copyright owner with the 
> right to use the interface. Undoubtedly, ISO is the copyright owner. But 
> they may authorize unlimited use of the specification, otherwise NO 
> standard would make sense. Do you infringe copyright if you build an 
> electrical plug that conforms to you electrical standard?

That's clearly covered by "fair use". But API Standards are different: you 
have to copy large parts of the Standard to implement them (and ASIS is an 
extreme case -- you have to copy 90% of it to use it). That certainly is not 
covered by "fair use".

It's my (semi-informed) opinion that API Standards are useless, because you 
have to violate the ISO copyright to use them (or buy a license).

> 2) Comments help, because they describe precisely what is expected by 
> every function, and what it provides. Actually, I never open the ASIS 
> standard, everything I need is detailed in the comments.

Exactly. Someone copied 90% of the ASIS standard without permission, and 
*that* is what you are using. And that is depriving ISO of possible revenue.

It's clear to me that anyone using ASIS specs is skating on thin ice. 
Whether it ever would become a problem for ISO is certainly unknown, but I 
wouldn't want to build a business on top of such a thing. It's definitely 
not open source by any reasonable definition.

We've spent a huge amount of effort to ensure that the Ada language (and 
it's language-defined packages) do not fall into the same trap. But it's way 
too late to do that for ASIS.

                                       Randy.