Hello,
All that MS does - enclose _public_ information into own file format.
What is permitted for Zeus, is not permitted for mortals! :-( That's exactly what I meant when I wrote that Microsoft are the biggest thefts. Even their first Basic interpreter was from public domain sources. Not speaking about QDOS -> MS-DOS, Lattice C -> Microsoft C, VMS -> NT, and so on.
Thus, I don't think that this is "beyond fair use" to reuse this public information. Violation (probably!) if we use original MS files and/or their format, but layouts are not property of MS.
Their COUNTRY.SYS format is safe to use, because PTS-DOS and OS/2 also use it and nobody has sued PhysTechSoft or IBM yet ;-) I've never understood copyright well (and even think that copyright is anti-natural!) but I don't think that a file format or data structures can be copyrighted at all.
Regards, Lucho
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