FreeTDS Development Group

[Brian Bruns <camber AT ais.org>]

My concern in a nutshell is this.  The orginal EULA that the document was 
provided on has some language explicitly not permiting "disclosure". In 
essence the ELUA is a NDA (non-disclosure agreement) similar to those used 
by hardware manufacturers.  Developers under linux/bsd/whatever are not 
allowed to read a specification under NDA and develop a driver for which 
source will be available.  Implementing knowledge in the spec and 
releasing source code is "disclosure".  Interestingly enough, one may 
produce a binary of said driver and party B may decompile it and 
reimplement one in source, but no one said the law has to make sense!

Anyway, until the legal ramifications are worked out, I will not 
personally be looking at the spec. jkl, does this mean you are back from 
vacation?

Brian

On Sat, 3 Aug 2002, James K. Lowden wrote:

> > can anyone give me a hint where I can find the "Tabular Data Stream"
> > protocol specs?
> > 
> > I've access to the universal MSDN subscription, but to no avail. 
> > Probably I'm looking in the wrong place?
> 
> Twan, 
> 
> http://www.sybase.com/content/1013412/tds34.pdf
> 
> As Brian said, Microsoft does not publish their specification.  As a
> matter of fact, they barely admit the existence of the protocol at all.  
> 
> Unfortunately, if you go to Sybase's site, no amount of searching will
> reveal the above document.  At http://www.sybase.com/developer you can ask
> for OpenClient downloads, which will reveal a broken link:
> http://crm.sybase.com/sybase/www/ESD/tds_spec_download.jsp (crm.sybase.com
> doesn't listen to port 80 even).  
> 
> Nevertheless, the document is on the web.  Its location may be obscure,
> but from  a legal point of view it's no different from any other
> copyrighted work on the www.  
> 
> Brian, I found in google's cached pages the EULA you remember.  Very
> unwelcoming document.  But the body of the document contains no such
> language, leading me to two conclusions:
> 
> 1.    It's OK to add the link to our site.  If we want to be super hyperlink
> hypercautious, we could send mail to their webmaster indicating we've done
> so.  
> 
> 2.    It's OK to read it.  Nothing in copyright law prevents you from 
> reading
> something and employing your knowledge to any end.  
> 
> Copying the document to our server might constitute "publishing" it,
> though.  
> 
> Regards, 
> 
> --jkl
>