Microsoft source code releases - a danger to Wine?

[Patrik Stridvall]

> There'a a legal doctrine whose name I can remember (I'm too young for
> senior moments!) ... "inevitable contamination" or something 

It is call "inevitable disclosure" I think.

> like that.
> The basic idea is that someone who had been exposed to 
> Microsoft source
> code and then worked on Wine within a given period of time would be
> assumed to have used knowledge gained from that exposure.  I believe
> that the burden would be on that person or the Wine project to show
> the opposite.

For that person, perhaps. IIRC the doctrine of "inevitable disclosure"
it on a little shaky ground as it is eventhough some Judges have
use it so far, it is NOT 100% established doctrine. 

As far as the Wine project is concerned, you will have to stretch
the doctrine pretty far since the Wine project can't possibly know
what a patch submittor has done before unless he tells us himself.
 
> This is what I'm really worried about.  Some well-meaning hacker takes
> "Advanced Operating System Theory" at a Microsoft-beholden university
> and then makes a contribution to Wine.  (The more I think about it,
> I'm surprised Microsoft isn't trying harder to expose more people to
> their code and license.)

Sure, we probaly need to make others more aware of that,
but that primarily concerns them, not us.
 
> Fair use?  We don't need stinking fair use!  After all, that might
> interfere with corporate earnings reports.  (I'm too old to become a
> communist!)

And favouring fair use have what to do with communism?

It is entirely possible to have a capitalistic society without
Intellectuall Property (IP) at all or with very weak IP 
(strong fair use).

> > That said, nothing I can see appears to restrict someone 
> who has accepted 
> > their license from answering explicit questions we might 
> have, so long as 
> > they are not doing so for hire (thus 'commercially'), and 
> so long as they 
> > don't distribute source code.  A fair bit of useful 
> knowledge might be 
> > gained in that way, albeit slowly.
> > 
> 
> 
> Now you're really scaring me!

Why? Any violation is primarily their problem and extending
derived work over a verbal description is stretching far
to far. This has already been established by actual 
court case.