4 ms·

Came to say just this. They say "illegally cloning our product", but I see nothing illegal so far and I'd love to be corrected. I doubt it is so, but even if t

Came to say just this. They say "illegally cloning our product", but I see nothing illegal so far and I'd love to be corrected. I doubt it is so, but even if those tokens pass the threshold of originality[0], does a few blobs of superficial text justify a lawsuit? Things would be dramatically different if they'd copied source code, but so far, it's just documentation. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality

dangus 8y ago
Directly copying a document is simple copyright infringement. Just because it's documentation doesn't mean everyone has a free license to copy and redistribute it. Whether or not any violations occurred in copying code probably depends on whether any employees with company secrets were poached and involved in development. That's a very big, well known no-no amongst tech companies. It's why Compaq had a complete "clean room" to reverse engineer the IBM PC.
- ttoinou 8y ago
  Couldn't they have written exactly the same things, taking inspiration ?
  - pizzapill 8y ago
    There is a UUID they use in a example that is 1:1 copied. > For example, the number of random version-4 UUIDs which need to be generated in order to have a 50% probability of at least one collision is 2.71 quintillion [...] This number is equivalent to generating 1 billion UUIDs per second for about 85 years, and a file containing this many UUIDs, at 16 bytes per UUID, would be about 45 exabytes, many times larger than the largest databases currently in existence, which are on the order of hundreds of petabytes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_unique_identifier#Collisions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_unique_identifier#... The probability that they generated the same text 1:1 and a UUID in it by random chance is very, very, very, very slim.
    - amingilani 8y ago
      I agree, that's what I meant. Are directly copied tokens enough to justify a lawsuit? There isn't a direct copy of any other content.
- amingilani 8y ago
  The screenshots in the article don't show a direct copy. They show copied tokens only.
  - dangus 8y ago
    Direct copied text in Request Access Token section
    - amingilani 8y ago
      I seem to have missed that, thanks for pointing it out! Then we arrive to the question: is a copyright claim over a few paragraphs of text worth the effort?
      - dangus 8y ago
        Maybe, maybe not. I don't know if this kind of thing reaches trial at any point, but I wonder if discovery would turn up any sort of direct code copying or reverse engineering done by poached employees. Perhaps the company even used decompiled code, it's not out of the realm of possibility that they simply directly stole the whole thing. I'm not sure any of that is actually likely, but I think that the fact that some paragraphs are directly lifted is a massive red flag.

dangus 8y ago

Directly copying a document is simple copyright infringement. Just because it's documentation doesn't mean everyone has a free license to copy and redistribute it. Whether or not any violations occurred in copying code probably depends on whether any employees with company secrets were poached and involved in development. That's a very big, well known no-no amongst tech companies. It's why Compaq had a complete "clean room" to reverse engineer the IBM PC.

ttoinou 8y ago
Couldn't they have written exactly the same things, taking inspiration ?
- pizzapill 8y ago
  There is a UUID they use in a example that is 1:1 copied. > For example, the number of random version-4 UUIDs which need to be generated in order to have a 50% probability of at least one collision is 2.71 quintillion [...] This number is equivalent to generating 1 billion UUIDs per second for about 85 years, and a file containing this many UUIDs, at 16 bytes per UUID, would be about 45 exabytes, many times larger than the largest databases currently in existence, which are on the order of hundreds of petabytes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_unique_identifier#Collisions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_unique_identifier#... The probability that they generated the same text 1:1 and a UUID in it by random chance is very, very, very, very slim.
  - amingilani 8y ago
    I agree, that's what I meant. Are directly copied tokens enough to justify a lawsuit? There isn't a direct copy of any other content.
amingilani 8y ago
The screenshots in the article don't show a direct copy. They show copied tokens only.
- dangus 8y ago
  Direct copied text in Request Access Token section
  - amingilani 8y ago
    I seem to have missed that, thanks for pointing it out! Then we arrive to the question: is a copyright claim over a few paragraphs of text worth the effort?
    - dangus 8y ago
      Maybe, maybe not. I don't know if this kind of thing reaches trial at any point, but I wonder if discovery would turn up any sort of direct code copying or reverse engineering done by poached employees. Perhaps the company even used decompiled code, it's not out of the realm of possibility that they simply directly stole the whole thing. I'm not sure any of that is actually likely, but I think that the fact that some paragraphs are directly lifted is a massive red flag.