[OT] xTalk Legal Status

Richmond Mathewson geradamas at yahoo.com
Sat Jul 22 14:12:04 EDT 2006


Mark Schonewille      wrote:

"No, the concept or idea of an xTalk language is not proprietary. 
The Transcript, Metatalk, Supertalk, HyperTalk and other 
languages are  definitely copyrighted."

This is very odd indeed:

presumably 'PUT', 'SET', 'AND' and so on are uncopyrightable as they are
parts of English (which is Open Source in every sense!).

Now from what Mark wrote it looks rather like the idea that ENGLISH is
free and Open Source, but dialects of it, such as American English, English English,
Scots English (which, bye-the-bye is spoken in Edinburgh and outwith the town),
Zimbabwean English are copyrighted.

(I apologise if your favourite English dialect is not included in the list above)

This needs a much more detailed explanation as what is and what is not
free/copyright/otherwise.

Lynne's note about source code is good to know but not relevant to the language
question: my sons and Lynne are not closely related (as far as I know) and we
could say that their source code is reasonably different, but they both speak
dialects of English.

By the way: I should like to copyright my own, persoanl, pompous style! :)

sincerely, Richmond Mathewson.
 
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"Philosophical problems are confusions arising owing to the fluidity of meanings users attach to words and phrases."
                                       Mathewson, 2006
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