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This is generally what lawyers recommend: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design -- although this is ge
by greglindahl 9y ago
This is generally what lawyers recommend: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design -- although this is generally done to avoid copyright complaints, not license complaints.
- philipkglass 9y agoBut per your link "Clean-room design (also known as the Chinese wall technique) is the method of copying a design by reverse engineering and then recreating it without infringing any of the copyrights associated with the original design." They did reverse engineer the code instead of infringing copyright. The problem is that it violated a license prohibition on reverse engineering. I'm not going to claim that the judges interpreted the law incorrectly, but I think that this legal result is overall bad for society. It means that a company can stifle competition even if potential competitors avoid violating copyright or patents.
- jnwatson 9y agoIf they had pirated the software, then they wouldn't violated a license prohibition since they wouldn't have agreed to it.
- Aeolun 9y agoI'm wondering how what they did is different from clean room design where the clean room is just intensely close to the non-clean room.