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It's true (AFAIK; IANAL) that if you are reading someone's source code and writing your own based closely on theirs, you may well still be infringing their copy
by ScottBurson 15y ago
It's true (AFAIK; IANAL) that if you are reading someone's source code and writing your own based closely on theirs, you may well still be infringing their copyright.
But the parent has an valid point nonetheless. If you do a clean room reimplementation of a program, then you are off the hook as far as copyright goes. Yet the user may not be able to tell the difference. In short, the user cares about the functionality of the program, not its expression (the source code).
I think that's a valid argument that copyright protection is not entirely sufficient for software, and that patents could have a useful role to play.
Personally, I think the problem with software patents today is that the obviousness bar is far too low -- we're patenting problems, not solutions. See my comments elsewhere on this page.
- binarybits 15y agoBut clean-room engineering is almost always slower than writing the software from scratch. Which, AFAICT, is what most companies actually do except in the rare case where they need to achieve interoperability with an existing product (like the early PC clones where bug-compatibility with the IBM PC was essential). Right?
- ScottBurson 15y agoI don't know if it's slower or not. It takes a certain amount of time to develop a functional spec; you have a head start if you have a working example in front of you. I think the main reason you don't see more clean-room reimplementations is simply, as you say, that level of compatibility is rarely necessary -- indeed, it's often considered undesirable, even by the users.
- petegrif 15y agoThat doesn't make any sense. It is the same as writing the software from scratch. The only difference is that the behavior of the original software which is being copied is effectively the spec.