GPL vs BSD Licence

[TM4525 at aol.com]

In a message dated 10/28/04 9:16:02 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
davids at webmaster.com writes:
>   But then, I'm not sure (and I mean it) if there can be any piece of
> software which, if designed for e.g. Linux, can be written w/o using any
> system headers, libraries or whatsoever.
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I find it impossible for any reasonable person to believe that, by making its
header files available  an O/S vendor therefore owns the rights to anything 
that runs on, or interoperates with the O/S. So Microsoft owns Photoshop.
And Netscape too. So why are they fighting?

Its been fairly well established that Lawyers know a lot about law but not
much about computing. You can't apply copyright law verbatim  to an 
operating system,  because unlike a written work, the operating systems 
entire purpose is to provide hooks for external applications and device 
drivers. Claiming that anything that works with it is a "derivative" is, 
quite 
simply, ridiculous.

The GPL is a myth. It will never be tested because if it is, it will lose all 
of 
its teeth. Its much more useful in a speculative state.