Now the process of using those tables may be patentable, but I am not sure how copyright would work in the straight data model scenario. I am sure I can reverse engineer the data model of ACT and make my own with a different front end and they couldn't do anything about it. The same goes with Quicken and a lot of other programs.
You can reverse engineer Virtual C++, too. You'd just better make sure it doesn't look like a stolen copy of the source code to Virtual C++ ...
We may be talking slightly at cross purposes here in that the data model's a bit like (say) Linux. Just as surely as Oracle can run on top of an installed copy of Linux and remain closed, MS could run something on top an installed copy of our data model.
But the source to our data model is covered by copyright and released under the GPL just as is the source to Linux. Just because it's written in SQL rather than C doesn't make it non-licensable.
So I suspect you may be thinking about whether or not you can run on top of the data model once it's installed?
Can one reverse engineer the data model by just having Oracle spit it out and reconstruct it using different names, etc? That's a toughie ... certainly you can decompile the datamodel much more completely in this way than you can decompile a running binary so the level of practical vulnerability is a lot higher than for a traditionally compiled C program.
But then again obsfucating the source in the first place is easy to do for either C or SQL code and this way of trying to circumvent the GPL has yet to be tested in court.
And I still agree with Torben's assessment that if MS tries to work around the GPL with the presumption that they'll win in court due to superior resources, there's really nothing one can do.
But if the won such an action it would undermine their "GPL is viral, stop the GPL" political fight against Open Source, too ...
