On Thursday, 18 February 2016 at 23:42:11 UTC, Chris Wright wrote:
You testify it under oath, and you hope you look honest. You can show a lack of GCC source code on your home computer, possibly.
If they actually have a strong case it will be highly unlikely that you have arrived at it independently. Of course, all you have to do is to remove the code and FSF will be happy. So if you let it go all the way to the court you can only blame yourself for being pedantic.
FSF will only sue over a strong case that carries political weight. A loss in court is a PR disaster for FSF.
There are damages for patent infringement. There are higher damages for willful infringement.
Iff you use it as a means for production. There is nothing illegal about implementing patented techniques in source code (i.e. describing them) and distributing it.
regarding GCC. And thanks to how software patents generally are, it'd probably be regarding something that most C/C++ compilers need to implement and the most obvious implementation for that feature.
If that is the case then there will be prior art that predates the patent.
If Walter had read the GCC source code from an infringing version after that case came to light, that's the sort of thing that can bring on triple damages. It depends on relative lawyer quality, of course, but it's much harder for the plaintiffs if there's no indication that you've accessed the GCC source code.
It should help you, not hurt you, if you learnt about a technique from a widespread codebase from an organization that is known for avoiding patents. If anything that proves that you didn't pick it up from the filed patent and was in good faith?
If the case came to light (e.g. you knew about it) and you didn't vet your own codebase then you will be to blame no matter where you got it from? But FSF would make sure they remove patented techniques from GCC so that scenario would be very unlikely.
In other words, you are more likely to be hit by a bus when crossing the street. I find this kind of anxiety hysterical to be honest. The only thing I get out of this is that companies shouldn't admit to using open source codebases.
Of course, one reason for avoiding reading other people's source code is that you have a client that makes it a requirement.
