It is not illegal to copy the ideas and concepts of a program no matter
what license it is released under. There has been some weird stuff lately
with being able to or trying to cover ideas and concepts under Trade Secret
law, but that is something completely different. That is why there are tons
of word processing programs that can read Word, Word Perfect, etc files.
This is also why a lot of the word processing programs have the same set of
features and work pretty much the same way.
The problem that becomes a huge issue is if you are looking at someone
else's source code while you are created a commercial package that does the
same thing. It becomes very difficult to prove that you didn't use the IP
(intellectual property) and copyrights of the original program while
writing your code. It is for this very reason that when a company is going
to clone a product they do it in what is called "clean room conditions".
They basically get engineers/programmers/whoever together and make sure
none of them have ever seen the secret bits of what they are going to
clone, and sometimes get people who have never seen the other product. Then
the one group writes up a huge description of how the product works and
what it does and all of that in general terms. Then the clean room group
takes this description and creates a product that does everything on the
description list, and thus builds a clone.
This is the exact reason why some companies won't hire some programmers for
X period of time to prevent these issues. Also this is why it is very risky
to steal an employee from your competitors software development company
because they typically can't use or reveal the trade secrets, use/copy
copyright, or use/copy IP from the original company. It ends up being very
messy and sometimes a huge long drawn out battle in court.
These are just some of the reasons that software companies have such a
problem with their programmers doing Open Source work, even in their off
time. It is also why you should know exactly what you are agreeing to in a
license and how it will effect you and your company for agreeing to a
particular license.
Hope this helps some. If you have any other questions let me know.
Tim Jung
System Admin
Internet Gateway
tjung@igateway.net
----- Original Message -----
From: "Colin Viebrock" <colin@easydns.com>
To: "Vladislav S. Davidzon" <vladislav@davidzon.com>
Cc: <bizops-list@opensrs.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2003 10:44 AM
Subject: Re: phpDomain (OpenSRS + Billing) for $49.95!
> Vladislav S. Davidzon wrote:
> > Greetings,
> >
> > This is a curious issue. First Colin -- I have spoken with the
programmer
> > and he has told me that the function which was inspired by your code
was
> > completely rewritten in one of the early versions. I am not sure what
> > the exact story is, but I am told that your code was *never* included
in
> > the product, and he was "inspired" by your work, essentially saying he
> > has read your code before, but didn't use it. In any case, those
routines
> > or functions have all been rewritten.
>
> Is the Pro version of your software the same as the free version, but
> with added functionality?
>
> Because I just downloaded the free version and, while it has been
> "rewritten", it is basically the same routines, the same logic, (and
> even the same variable names in some cases) as the sourceforge project.
> Which was "inspired", as yor programmer puts it, by the official perl
> client.
>
> So, if the pro uses the same code base, then I think you are into a bit
> of a grey area. Someone with more knowledge of licensing can give their
> thoughts on this.
>
> - Colin
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