On Jan 20, 11:51 pm, Albert van der Horst <alb...@spenarnc.xs4all.nl> wrote: > This is what some people want you to believe. Arm twisting by > GPL-ers when you borrow their ideas? That is really unheard of.
Doesn't matter, you're still legally liable if your work is found to be derivative and lacking a fair use defense. It's not borrowing "ideas" that's problematic, it's proving that's all you did. For those of us with legal departments, we have no choice: if they don't believe we can prove our case, we're not using the code, period. The risk simply isn't worth it. > GPL-ers are not keen on getting the most monetary award by > setting lawyers on you and go to court only reluctantly to > enforce the license. And? Monetary award is hardly the only issue. > Stealing code means just that, verbatim copies. When you read this > carefully, you can see that reimplementing the stolen code is > an option. Exactly what you say is legally impossible. No, in the United States it means anything that constitutes a derivative work, since derivative works of GPL-licensed works must be released under the GPL. Merely copying ideas does not make one a derivative work, but one also must be prepared to show that's all that happened. As such, it would have to be a substantially different implementation, generally with some sort of added or useful value. Proving that can be difficult and may very well depend on what court you land in. > > So pardon me, but not even looking at code you might learn from > is pretty hysteric. Not at all. Separating ideas from implementation can be difficult, and convincing a judge of that vastly more so. It's a legitimate concern, and people who intend to ship proprietary software should definitely resort to GPL-licensed software last when looking for inspiration. Adam -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
