On Saturday 18 June 2005 07:18 pm, Glenn Maynard wrote: > On Sat, Jun 18, 2005 at 06:11:45PM -0700, Sean Kellogg wrote: > > Shocking as it may sound, I agree with everything Michael has said here. > > Cleanroom implementation is not a good defense against copyright > > infringement. If you want to write code and release it under a license > > under the GPL, then don't look at the GPL'ed code. Otherwise you are > > copying something... and while its possible that that "something" isn't > > itself copyrightable material, chances are good that it is AND it really > > goes against the whole "meaning and intent" of the GPL. > > This seems to boil down to "once you've looked at GPL code that does > something, you're forever banned from writing anything similar to it > under another license". I hope I'm not the only one that finds that > questionable. And no, it doesn't go against the intent of the GPL; > the GPL is intended to lock a piece of software into itself, not whole > programmers. > > I've seen a whole lot of GPL'd code. It's awfully hard to make money > writing GPL'd code. Should I be looking for a new career?
Look at all the GPL'ed code you want... but if you intend to look at code, attempt to cleanroom the code YOURSELF, and then re-implement it, as the original poster suggested, then I think you've got a problem. But it raises a unique problem from a legal test perspective. Non-literal infringement generally requires two things A) similarity, B) access. In the case of proprietary code, B is often missing... but how does the test work in a FOSS setting where everyone has access? Is the only legal issue similarity, or does the public availability alter the analysis? -Sean -- Sean Kellogg 2nd Year - University of Washington School of Law GPSS Senator - Student Bar Association Editor-at-Large - National ACS Blog [http://www.acsblog.org] c: 206.498.8207 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] w: http://probonogeek.blogspot.com So, let go ...Jump in ...Oh well, what you waiting for? ...it's all right ...'Cause there's beauty in the breakdown
