I lumped a couple of replies so please take note that there are two different
attributions here:
On 03-Mar-99 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Very recently I was disheartened to see that someone "cloned" my program,
> copying the concepts and screen designs, releasing it as freeware.
>
> Writing programs for the palm has the main objective of practicing my
> programming skills, and having fun, even because the $5 / $8 for a
> registration would not make me a millionaire, it actually barely covers the
> development costs. However, that does not mean I would like to see my
> programs being cloned like that.
I am sorry that people producing free software affects your ability to
recover development costs. But speaking as a grateful user/writer of free
software I have to assume that reasonable people can see the difference
between the motivation of a copycat shareware author and a copycat freeware
author. A lot of free software is meant to work-alike because of the
popularity and usefulness of a particular shareware/commercial package, but
not meant to spite the original author.
On 03-Mar-99 Alan Pinstein wrote:
> You can copyright text, layouts, etc. This means that if you copyright your
> software, then someone can't make something else that is 'strikingly
> similar'. They can copy the idea, but not the 'expression' as someone else
> put it. It is also illegal to reverse engineer and re-use code, as someone
> did to us.
Obviously you shouldn't rip the code or pull the resources from someone's
project without their permission. That is unethical and illegal if the
author hasn't explicitly granted you this permission in his license. But I
cannot agree at all that it is a copyright violation to produce a free
work-alike of a popular piece of software -- assuming it was done using
"clean room" methods. That happens all the time, and for good reason. Free
software is good!
/* Chris Faherty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, finger for PGP */
