Jeff Patten wrote in a message to Mike Bilow:

 MB> That will never happen.  Each API is intellectual property. 
 MB> In order to make a product that converts, say, the Windows
 MB> API into the OS/2 PM API, you would have to get Microsoft to
 MB> agree.  This is a very complicated issue.  For one thing,
 MB> Microsoft might be in for antitrust problems if they refused
 MB> to grant such a license on reasonable terms.

 JP>    Didn't IBM obtain rights to clone Win32 APIs as part of
 JP> the deal where IBM pulled out of NT development?

The original question was whether a developer could make a product that
took source code written to the Windows API and compiled it to run against
the OS/2 PM API as native code without paying a license fee to Microsoft
for the Windows API.  This is a complicated issue, but the fact that IBM
may have a license agreement in place which allows them to do it does not
necessarily imply that anyone else could exercise the same rights without
their own license.

IBM did not "pull out of NT development."  My understanding is
that the NT API was switched to use the Windows 3.0 API as a basis instead
of the OS/2 PM API without IBM's knowledge and after work using the OS/2 PM
API had been started. IBM has effectively the same rights to the Win32 API
that they do to the Windows 3.1 API, as far as I know, since it was
developed years prior to the agreement in 1992.

Even SMART, which analyzes Windows API source and makes suggestions about
converting it to OS/2 PM API source, walks a fine line.
 
-- Mike


---