Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
Maybe, but I'm fairly certain that Walter *has* consulted copyright
lawyers about this, and his decision is a reflection of that
discussion. Judging by that, I think we can assume via anecdotal
evidence that his position is pretty solid.
I've been involved in copyright infringement cases from both directions, both as
accused and accuser.
Not having copied code does not guarantee you won't be accused of infringement.
But doing everything practical to make it hard for others to get traction for
their case helps avoid very expensive legal bills.
A couple examples:
1. I once got a very grumpy email from a person accusing me of selling his
software without a license. I dug up an email from him to me that was several
years old giving me permission, and forwarded that to him. I got a very contrite
apology back. It pays to keep your old emails.
2. A major corporation contracted me to do some work for them. I did, and they
shipped it, but refused to pay me. They claimed they "rewrote it from scratch".
An 'nm' on their binary showed that 95% of the names in the software were
identical to what I provided them. They folded.
3. A couple of programmers decided that they had created the game Empire. I
produced registered copyrights that predated their claim of initially writing it
by 5 years. They folded.
4. Twice I've had people try to trick me into shipping code that *they* stole.
5. I was once accused of stealing A's software, when A had stolen it from me.
This is only some of the crap I've had to put up with. I know many people think
I'm paranoid and overreact to this. I'm the one who'll get stuck with the legal
bills, though, so I think I'll stick with being paranoid.
Oh, and saying "I never looked at that source code" is a satisfactory answer to
a phalanx of corporate copyright lawyers, in my experience.
