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I just read the sub-thread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16691774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16691774 onwards and started nodding in agree

I just read the sub-thread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16691774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16691774 onwards and started nodding in agreement at the fine arguments therein. But then sanity hit me in the face like a damp glacier and I remembered the 9 lines of code in question. Please anyone who's ever programmed anything; take a step back and tell me this is sane. Tell me there's not a billion cases like this out there waiting for a lawyer to unearth them. However persuasive the step by step logic seems, it's the same step by step that paves the road to hell. If logic, reason and law bring us to this point then it's logic, reason and law that need to be carefully reexamined.

ggm 9y ago
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but there are a rough Fermi-number million or more, of this kind of event, and this decision, which most people in the practice of writing software would consider a massive reversal, quite aside from being a retrograde step, implies that both sides of the deal are now in some sense duty-bound to investigate. You could be the unwitting, unintending offendor by trivial API copying, entirely normal in your prior working experiences. You could now be the person who has to inform senior staff that due to this decision, code your company owns as IPR is the subject of this kind of copying. Think about it: If you discovered that any activity you did was now potentially valuable in a lawsuit to generate income, by what right do you not inform senior staff? What you feel about the lawsuit is distinct from your obligation as a company officer, regarding its status surely?