4 ms·

I try to never look at GPL/LGPL code if I'm going to implement something at work or under another license. Sorry for suggesting a good practice to avoid legal

by alayne 12y ago

I try to never look at GPL/LGPL code if I'm going to implement something at work or under another license. Sorry for suggesting a good practice to avoid legal liability.

JadeNB 12y ago
> Sorry for suggesting a good practice to avoid legal liability. Why is this good practice? Has anyone ever been exposed to a legal liability that could be creditably attributed to their merely looking at (as opposed to using) such code? (Although my suspicion is that the answer is 'no', this is an honest question.)
- steveklabnik 12y ago
  Yes, it can come up. See the recent Google / Oracle lawsuit, where it was specifically presented that Dalvik was a 'clean room' implementation.
  - JadeNB 12y ago
    > Yes, it can come up. See the recent Google / Oracle lawsuit, where it was specifically presented that Dalvik was a 'clean room' implementation. I have no doubt that it can come up—all sorts of ludicrousness can; but my question was rather whether there have actually been any legal consequences, not just legal challenges. I haven't been following the lawsuit, and can't find at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_v._Google http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_v._Google any clear indication of whether any of the decisions specifically find Google at fault specifically for copying GPL'd code. This article (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/the-real-history-of-java-and-android-as-told-by-google/3924 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/the-real-history-of-java-and-...), which may or may not be reliable, implies that there are subtle concerns at play: If this were a simple matter of some code being open and some not, this wouldn't be a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit. But the precise details of how Sun chose to write its licensing terms are extremely important.
- cjbprime 12y ago
  I think the idea is that it's going to be difficult, having looked at the code, to implement a version that is not similar enough to the original to trigger a copyright "derivative work". For example, I believe it used to be the case (just a few years ago) that Microsoft employees were contractually prohibited from looking at GPL'd code. But if alayne is planning on bringing that up every time someone shares a post that might contain GPL code, alayne is quickly going to become the most tedious person at the party, and that's why the downvotes are happening. If your situation prevents you from studying and learning from GPL'd code, then just don't study it, and don't brag about not studying it.
  - JadeNB 12y ago
    To be clear, I didn't mean "why might there be fear about this?" (which I can understand, though it sounds a bit hysterical to me), but rather "has this ever actually happened (outside of a lawyer's dreams / nightmares)?", as a weaker version of the question "is avoiding this really good practice?". P.S. Perhaps a good defence against a claim of copyright infringement would be "you can tell that my version isn't a copy, because it correctly finds 'nana' as a substring of 'banana'"? ;-)
    - cjbprime 12y ago
      I see. I'm not aware of any case law either. I don't think it's good practise, and agree that it's hysterical, and think it stems from unthinkingly believing Microsoft's anti-OSS claims during their decade-long freakout about open source and the GPL. I think that attempting to convince people not to participate in sharing and studying code with the rest of the world is an evil thing that they did, especially since the GPL was the most popular OSS license at the time.
      - alayne 12y ago
        I'm absolutely not anti-OSS. I personally think it is against the spirit of the GPL to copy code that is GPLed, though. I'm just saying be careful about how you do your engineering. This seemed like an inexperienced developer and he mentioned glibc vocally along with the comment "I'll admit that originally I copied this logic from glibc's implementation without fully understanding it, but I've now taken a closer look at the Two-Way paper and understand what it does." It's certainly not good software engineering to copy implementation like that. It is good that he read the paper. Now I regret even bringing it up. I don't feel that I deserve your ad hominem comments or characterizations of my motivations.

by alayne 12y ago

I try to never look at GPL/LGPL code if I'm going to implement something at work or under another license. Sorry for suggesting a good practice to avoid legal liability.

JadeNB 12y ago

> Sorry for suggesting a good practice to avoid legal liability. Why is this good practice? Has anyone ever been exposed to a legal liability that could be creditably attributed to their merely looking at (as opposed to using) such code? (Although my suspicion is that the answer is 'no', this is an honest question.)

steveklabnik 12y ago
Yes, it can come up. See the recent Google / Oracle lawsuit, where it was specifically presented that Dalvik was a 'clean room' implementation.
- JadeNB 12y ago
  > Yes, it can come up. See the recent Google / Oracle lawsuit, where it was specifically presented that Dalvik was a 'clean room' implementation. I have no doubt that it can come up—all sorts of ludicrousness can; but my question was rather whether there have actually been any legal consequences, not just legal challenges. I haven't been following the lawsuit, and can't find at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_v._Google http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_v._Google any clear indication of whether any of the decisions specifically find Google at fault specifically for copying GPL'd code. This article (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/the-real-history-of-java-and-android-as-told-by-google/3924 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/the-real-history-of-java-and-...), which may or may not be reliable, implies that there are subtle concerns at play: If this were a simple matter of some code being open and some not, this wouldn't be a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit. But the precise details of how Sun chose to write its licensing terms are extremely important.
cjbprime 12y ago
I think the idea is that it's going to be difficult, having looked at the code, to implement a version that is not similar enough to the original to trigger a copyright "derivative work". For example, I believe it used to be the case (just a few years ago) that Microsoft employees were contractually prohibited from looking at GPL'd code. But if alayne is planning on bringing that up every time someone shares a post that might contain GPL code, alayne is quickly going to become the most tedious person at the party, and that's why the downvotes are happening. If your situation prevents you from studying and learning from GPL'd code, then just don't study it, and don't brag about not studying it.
- JadeNB 12y ago
  To be clear, I didn't mean "why might there be fear about this?" (which I can understand, though it sounds a bit hysterical to me), but rather "has this ever actually happened (outside of a lawyer's dreams / nightmares)?", as a weaker version of the question "is avoiding this really good practice?". P.S. Perhaps a good defence against a claim of copyright infringement would be "you can tell that my version isn't a copy, because it correctly finds 'nana' as a substring of 'banana'"? ;-)
  - cjbprime 12y ago
    I see. I'm not aware of any case law either. I don't think it's good practise, and agree that it's hysterical, and think it stems from unthinkingly believing Microsoft's anti-OSS claims during their decade-long freakout about open source and the GPL. I think that attempting to convince people not to participate in sharing and studying code with the rest of the world is an evil thing that they did, especially since the GPL was the most popular OSS license at the time.
    - alayne 12y ago
      I'm absolutely not anti-OSS. I personally think it is against the spirit of the GPL to copy code that is GPLed, though. I'm just saying be careful about how you do your engineering. This seemed like an inexperienced developer and he mentioned glibc vocally along with the comment "I'll admit that originally I copied this logic from glibc's implementation without fully understanding it, but I've now taken a closer look at the Two-Way paper and understand what it does." It's certainly not good software engineering to copy implementation like that. It is good that he read the paper. Now I regret even bringing it up. I don't feel that I deserve your ad hominem comments or characterizations of my motivations.