On Wednesday, 19-Novenber-2008 at 9:48:15 Ryan Cole wrote, >While the term proprietary language is common and sounds sensible, I would >have to argue its often incorrectly used to refer to a proprietary >interpreter or compiler. The REBOL interpreter is definitely proprietary. >However, whether the language itself is proprietary is very disputable at >best. Consider this: > >1. ORCA is an open source interpreter for REBOL. If the language was RT's >property, legally RT would have been obligated to warn ORCA not to use it. >By not doing so, they have effectively, in a legally binding way, waived any >possible rights to it. >2. RT has not explicitly called the language itself proprietary, patented, >copyrighted, or anything else to take ownership of it that I am aware of. >Not even in the license.
>From the license: "You may not reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the >SOFTWARE." To my mind, writing a compiler for REBOL is a form of reverse engineering RT's compiler. I've no idea whether that'd stand up in court though, and if it's true RT's done nothing to put a stop to ORCA, then the question's possibly mute anyway. >3. I am not aware of another language being owned, patented, copyrighted, or >licensed by a company. There may be, but that does not appear to be the >norm. Most languages seem to be widely and openly shared. Its the >interpreters, compilers, and other software that are owned. As long as they don't use... http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220040230959%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20040230959&RS=DN/20040230959 >4. Not having a standards body does not mean its proprietary. BASIC does >not have a standards body, and it is definitely not proprietary. -- Carl Read -- To unsubscribe from the list, just send an email to lists at rebol.com with unsubscribe as the subject.
