[OT] xTalk Legal Status

[Mark Schonewille]

Hi Bill,

SuperCard, Revolution, HyperTalk and a few other lesser known xTalk  
environments are all copyright protected. There are a few languages  
in the works, some of which already died, which are open-source.

AFAIK Revolution nor SuperCard pays a royalty to Apple, there is no  
need for that. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if someone appears to  
have paid for the right to use part of the HyperCard source code.  
Just speculation.

Anyone can make a compiler/interpreter that speaks an xTalk variant,  
as long as you don't reverse engineer. A legal approach would be to  
make an xTalk environment first and then make it compatible with  
existing xTalk platforms, but maybe you don't even need to consider  
what's legal, as long as you're not reverse engineering or copying.

Best,

Mark

--

Economy-x-Talk
Consultancy and Software Engineering
http://economy-x-talk.com
http://www.salery.biz

Download ErrorLib at http://economy-x-talk.com/developers.html and  
get full control of error handling in Revolution.



Op 22-jul-2006, om 14:33 heeft Bill Marriott het volgende geschreven:

> Honest question:
>
> Can anyone say what the legal status of our favorite language is?
>
> HyperTalk was released by Apple, then there were a bunch of  
> "clones" -- are
> the keywords, structures, syntax, etc., protected by patent and/or
> copyright? Does Revolution pay a royalty to Apple? Can anyone make a
> compiler/interpreter that speaks HyperTalk and/or TranScript and/or
> Revolution?
>