[comp.sys.amiga] Language implementations

utoddl@ecsvax.UUCP (Todd M. Lewis) (08/08/89)

In article <43860@bbn.COM>, denbeste@bbn.com (Steven Den Beste) writes:
> The latest Business Week had two tidbits about Apple:
> 2. Adobe, the folks who came up with "PostScript", was part owned by Apple, and
> [. . .]
> going to engineer its own product to emulate the one it was buying from Adobe.
> (I was a little confused about just what the product was. It didn't sound like
> printer software. Maybe it was a program to do screen-dumps to post-script
> printers?) The implication was strong that customers wouldn't be able to tell
> the products apart.

It was the PostScript interpreter that lives in their printers.
> 
> Hey, Adobe: Can your lawyers say "look and feel"?

Of course they can.  But you can't copyright a language.

However...  Someone once tried to sell a product that used the
SAS language from SAS Institute (who bought Lattice because they
wanted their own C compiler--Someone please toast my cookies if
I'm wrong about this:-).  SAS claimed they owned the language
and shook enough lawyers at them to get them to give up the idea.
The way I heard it, SAS couldn't have won the fight, but the 
little guy couldn't afford to challenge.

This may a myth.

So, has anybody ported a subset of SAS to the Amiga? :-)
_____        
  |      Todd M. Lewis            Disclaimer: If you want my employer's
  ||\/|  utoddl@ecsvax.uncecs.edu             ideas, you'll have to
  ||  || utoddl@ecsvax.bitnet                 _buy_ them. 
   |  ||     
       |___   (Never write a program bigger than your screen.)