2012/11/15 Robert Kern <[email protected]>:
> That's questionable as a statement of fact, I think. There are a
> variety of judgements that a court would need to make to determine if
> something infringed, and I don't think that just looking at the
> original code is a determinative one, though it may certainly
> contribute. The possible sets of judgements vary from jurisdiction to
> jurisdiction, and none of them are well-precedented for software. I
> don't mean to nitpick; I know you aren't a lawyer, and neither am I,
> but I don't want people to walk away from this discussion thinking
> that they can sue for copyright infringement if someone so much as
> looks at their code while reimplementing their algorithm. All that
> said, since we are on the other side, it may behoove us to treat it as
> if it were true.

You're right, I was exaggerating a bit, and whether or not something
*is* copyright infringement is of course up to a judge, of course. I
just like to stay on the safe side.

> What *is* widely accepted as a legal practice, at least in the US, is
> to split up into two teams: one that reads the original software and
> writes documentation and test cases and one that takes the
> documentation and tests to write the new implementation.

[OT] I'd heard of this practice. It always seemed like the legal
version of the Chinese room to me -- as long as the two teams are
separated, no-one's intelligent enough to know they're violating
copyright ;)

-- 
Lars Buitinck
Scientific programmer, ILPS
University of Amsterdam

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