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We debated internally about what this would look like, and in the end we decided that should the need arise, the process would be: 1. A commit to plainly remov

We debated internally about what this would look like, and in the end we decided that should the need arise, the process would be: 1. A commit to plainly remove the functionality (or lines of code) 2. A developer would rewrite the code with a set of variables they cannot use, but I suppose they'd also code without the original implementation as reference. Each individual developer's implementation should be different enough that it would be easy to tell that it was independent crafted, although something like this hasn't been tested in court (at least to my knowledge!)

not2b 6y ago
The way this is sometimes done in industry, when the copyright owner is known to be litigious, is for developer A to read the code and write a spec. Developer B writes the new implementation based on the spec. If B has any questions, she cannot take to A directly, the questions are routed through a lawyer to make sure that nothing copyrighted is exchanged. (that last part might be overkill, but if the other party is Oracle you might want to use it). If the developer who does the rewrite uses the original as a reference, it will be likely that enough of the structure will creep through that the project will be at legal risk.
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
Something that always gives me pause: what would happen if a developer removed a bunch of code? That can of course take a significant amount of time/energy/skill in itself, and is presumably copyrightable work. But, how could it possibly be re-done?
- ignoranceprior 6y ago
  This is an interesting question. I'm certainly not a lawyer, but it's not obvious to me whether or not removals of code would be copyrightable. If Dev A writes 1000 lines of code, and Dev B carefully removes 20 specific lines that are unnecessary or introduce bugs, the resulting codebase consists entirely of Dev A's code, but Dev B might justifiably claim to deserve credit for their effort. I'd like someone more familiar with copyright law to chime in.
  - jlokier 6y ago
    Here's my understanding. I'm not a lawyer and don't know a lot about copyright or derived works either, but the "creativity" thing comes up in discussions sometimes. If you give me a sequence of integers from 1 to 1000 (which is not a creative work and therefore not copyrightable), and I selectively delete some of the integers such that the differences between adjacent numbers contains a fun message in ASCII, and publish that sequence, the result is copyright because those particular deletions add a creative element. But if I just deleted every alternate number in the sequence, that wouldn't be copyrightable because it's not creative. (Although you can imagine some scenario when doing so might be creative, it would need some reason why it was.) Basically, if Dev B does a change that passes some threshold of creativity, then they have a claim. If they just go through and delete all the blank lines and reformat in a standard way, they probably don't. In your example, I think it would depend on which 20 lines and whether they were trivial changes to figure out.

not2b 6y ago

The way this is sometimes done in industry, when the copyright owner is known to be litigious, is for developer A to read the code and write a spec. Developer B writes the new implementation based on the spec. If B has any questions, she cannot take to A directly, the questions are routed through a lawyer to make sure that nothing copyrighted is exchanged. (that last part might be overkill, but if the other party is Oracle you might want to use it). If the developer who does the rewrite uses the original as a reference, it will be likely that enough of the structure will creep through that the project will be at legal risk.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

Something that always gives me pause: what would happen if a developer removed a bunch of code? That can of course take a significant amount of time/energy/skill in itself, and is presumably copyrightable work. But, how could it possibly be re-done?

ignoranceprior 6y ago
This is an interesting question. I'm certainly not a lawyer, but it's not obvious to me whether or not removals of code would be copyrightable. If Dev A writes 1000 lines of code, and Dev B carefully removes 20 specific lines that are unnecessary or introduce bugs, the resulting codebase consists entirely of Dev A's code, but Dev B might justifiably claim to deserve credit for their effort. I'd like someone more familiar with copyright law to chime in.
- jlokier 6y ago
  Here's my understanding. I'm not a lawyer and don't know a lot about copyright or derived works either, but the "creativity" thing comes up in discussions sometimes. If you give me a sequence of integers from 1 to 1000 (which is not a creative work and therefore not copyrightable), and I selectively delete some of the integers such that the differences between adjacent numbers contains a fun message in ASCII, and publish that sequence, the result is copyright because those particular deletions add a creative element. But if I just deleted every alternate number in the sequence, that wouldn't be copyrightable because it's not creative. (Although you can imagine some scenario when doing so might be creative, it would need some reason why it was.) Basically, if Dev B does a change that passes some threshold of creativity, then they have a claim. If they just go through and delete all the blank lines and reformat in a standard way, they probably don't. In your example, I think it would depend on which 20 lines and whether they were trivial changes to figure out.