From owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Sep 5 14:36:34 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 928A916A4BF for ; Fri, 5 Sep 2003 14:36:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from shell.webmaster.com (mail.webmaster.com [216.152.64.131]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D607A4400F for ; Fri, 5 Sep 2003 14:36:33 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from davids@webmaster.com) Received: from however ([206.171.168.138]) by shell.webmaster.com (Post.Office MTA v3.5.3 release 223 ID# 0-12345L500S10000V35) with SMTP id com; Fri, 5 Sep 2003 14:33:23 -0700 From: "David Schwartz" To: "Rahul Siddharthan" , "Brett Glass" Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2003 14:36:01 -0700 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.6604 (9.0.2911.0) Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: <20030905162159.GA3542@online.fr> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1106 cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org cc: Mark Murray Subject: RE: Ugly Huge BSD Monster X-BeenThere: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Non technical items related to the community List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 05 Sep 2003 21:36:34 -0000 > There are still issues like "there are only so many ways to write a > for loop" and "you could have copied it and obfuscated it". These > things are very hard to prove, but if you want to worry about such > accusations, you'd better worry about commercial non-GPL companies > first. They need not prove, either, that you ever saw their code: > they would claim that the similarity is sufficient that you could not > have written your code independently without seeing theirs. [snip] > - Rahul No. They must prove that you saw their code. If they cannot prove access, they cannot prove a copyright violation. (You cannot copy what you did not have access to.) People often misunderstand the Harrison case as showing that similarity is sufficient to prove access. But in the Harrison case, there was no dispute that Harrison had access to and in fact heard the work he was accused of copying. If you can cite any law or case law to the contrary, please do. (And if you have proprietary code, do *NOT* brag about how secure your systems are, it will come back to haunt you!) DS