4 ms·

> Personally I'd not touch this with a 3-meter bargepole, because I live in a country where people use copyright and trademark law to take people to court, yet

> Personally I'd not touch this with a 3-meter bargepole, because I live in a country where people use copyright and trademark law to take people to court, yet it's an interesting project. You feel using it would open you up to a copyright claim?

PieterH 10y ago
If I used this in a commercial product, it would be trivial (absolutely trivial) for the owner of the original product to take me to court for illegal distribution of their copyrighted works, based on the argument that the code I was distributing (for profit!) was written by someone who (by own admission in public) had reverse-engineered the original product. IANAL but I'd be willing to bet money on this. The only questions would be (a) is the original product one that matters enough to protect in such a way and (b) does the owner of that original product have the money and lawyers to start such legal actions. This isn't some random app. This is one of Microsoft's crown jewels we're talking about.
- charlesdm 10y ago
  As long as you didn't use any of the original Skype code, you have nothing to fear (if you're based in Europe)
  - PieterH 10y ago
    I made a quite clear explanation of the argument a lawyer would use. This open source client is in effect a pirate copy of the closed source client. I expect it will disappear from Github rather soon.
  - wolfgke 10y ago
    > As long as you didn't use any of the original Skype code, you have nothing to fear (if you're based in Europe) The original Skype code is clearly not available to anyone outside the original Skype team or some team inside Microsoft. What is publicly available is a binary that is produced from this code.
jacquesm 10y ago
It is a derivation.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  It's not a derivative of the presentation of the artistic elements of a work. It's derived from the technical working of a piece of software. The elements of the software doing novel technical stuff might be patented, but copying the technical working is allowed. Copyright doesn't protect technical aspects. If the project copies the UK of Skype, then that's a tort. If it copies the written code or uses the human reading of that code to derive a new codebase, then that's a tort. If it copies the technical implementation, how memory is accessed, what codecs are used, what packets are sent and when ... that's not copyright infringement.

PieterH 10y ago

If I used this in a commercial product, it would be trivial (absolutely trivial) for the owner of the original product to take me to court for illegal distribution of their copyrighted works, based on the argument that the code I was distributing (for profit!) was written by someone who (by own admission in public) had reverse-engineered the original product. IANAL but I'd be willing to bet money on this. The only questions would be (a) is the original product one that matters enough to protect in such a way and (b) does the owner of that original product have the money and lawyers to start such legal actions. This isn't some random app. This is one of Microsoft's crown jewels we're talking about.

charlesdm 10y ago
As long as you didn't use any of the original Skype code, you have nothing to fear (if you're based in Europe)
- PieterH 10y ago
  I made a quite clear explanation of the argument a lawyer would use. This open source client is in effect a pirate copy of the closed source client. I expect it will disappear from Github rather soon.
- wolfgke 10y ago
  > As long as you didn't use any of the original Skype code, you have nothing to fear (if you're based in Europe) The original Skype code is clearly not available to anyone outside the original Skype team or some team inside Microsoft. What is publicly available is a binary that is produced from this code.

jacquesm 10y ago

It is a derivation.

pbhjpbhj 10y ago
It's not a derivative of the presentation of the artistic elements of a work. It's derived from the technical working of a piece of software. The elements of the software doing novel technical stuff might be patented, but copying the technical working is allowed. Copyright doesn't protect technical aspects. If the project copies the UK of Skype, then that's a tort. If it copies the written code or uses the human reading of that code to derive a new codebase, then that's a tort. If it copies the technical implementation, how memory is accessed, what codecs are used, what packets are sent and when ... that's not copyright infringement.