Lpc2000

John Heenan wrote:

>I have no intention of letting myself become vulnerable to copyright 
>issues. I see Keil as having made strategic decisions they intend to 
>gain commercially from. I am not going to subvert that.
>
>It is standard practice for companies to produce an SDK (Software 
>Development Kit) for developers to make productive use of their product 
>line. Developing from scratch using a data sheet is not commercially 
>sane for this level of complexity. In effect Keil has done the work for 
>Philips (if they allow you to adapt their examples). Of course if 
>Philips got the message that their product sales will suffer without an 
>independent SDK then they may rethink the absence.
>  
>
I think that the issue most of these companies just don't understand is 
that they pollute their own copyright with their policies.  They 
blatently slap copyright notices on everything in sight, regardless of 
their right it do so or not.  When it comes to REAL STUFF that they 
actually wrote, and is something that they really really want to 
protect, they've overloaded the user with so many bogus copyright claims 
that the end user just doesn't care anymore.

To people who do know what a legal copyright is, the "copyright 
anything" behavior just shows how ignorant a company is and leaves the 
question of "is anything truely copyrightable"?

Figure it this way, if they are asserting copyright over materials that 
cannot be copywrited, do you think they can tell the difference if you 
use their "copyrighted" code?  They probably have no clue as to what 
they could prosecute as a copyright violation...

Regards,

TomW







-- 
Tom Walsh - WN3L - Embedded Systems Consultant
http://openhardware.net, http://cyberiansoftware.com
"Windows? No thanks, I have work to do..."
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