On Thu, Mar 03, 2005 at 03:41:49PM +0000, Brian M. Carlson wrote: > Also, using the term "pirated code" is not likely to win you many > friends here. A pirate is defined as the following: > > 1. A robber on the high seas; one who by open violence takes > the property of another on the high seas; especially, one > who makes it his business to cruise for robbery or > plunder; a freebooter on the seas; also, one who steals in > a harbor. > > If you are insinuating that any person committed "open violence" to > obtain or distribute this code, you must show evidence to that effect. > Otherwise, if that is not the case, you should use more accurate terms, > such as "illegally distributed code" or "illegally acquired code", as > the case may be.
"Improperly licensed code" would be more accurate (or perhaps "unlicensed"). It's not even intrinsically illegal. Probably "sufficient possibility of losing a lawsuit", which is all we normally need for this sort of thing, but that's much weaker. [I would not consider this a clear win for the relevant university; they'd have a fair amount of work to do to prove that they own it and have not implicitly licensed it, and that neither the statue of limitations nor doctrine of laches applies; they have been grossly negligent in letting it go this long]. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- |
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