[Accessibility] LGPL compatibility of the UI Automation Community Promise
Olaf Schmidt
ojschmidt at kde.org
Tue Mar 25 02:20:25 PDT 2008
Hi!
I have found some more information that relates to the questions whether
Microsoft's "UI Automation Community Promise" is sufficiently open for our
purposes.
It seems that no lawyer has done an analysis of the UI Automation promise
itself, but it is closely related to the OSP, which has been analysed both be
the LinuxFoundation's Andy Updegrove and by the Software Freedom Law Center.
Andy Updegrove's evaluation of the OSP is positive, but some of his positive
comments relate to exactly those points which are different between the OSP
and the UI Automation promise. He does not address the question of LGPL
compatibility:
http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20060912140103877
The SFLC warn that such an incompatibility indeed exists:
http://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2008/mar/12/osp-gpl/
Microsoft also warn in their FAQ that the incompatibility might exist. This
statement from Microsoft itself is actually what concerns me most, since they
could easily have written "We will not sue you for writing LGPL code for UI
Automation", but they chose not to do so. They instead warn us to talk to our
lawyers when coding to the UI Automation API.
I asked the SFLC if they did an analysis of the UI Automation promise. I was
advised to contact Jim Zemlin about it, so that it can be answered by the
LinuxFoundations' own lawyers (Andy Updegrove and Karen Copenhaver).
Janina, can you forward this question?
Olaf
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