> If I merely comment out the text, rather than wipe it from the source code, have I really fulfilled my responsibility to not infringe on James' copyright? T

> If I merely comment out the text, rather than wipe it from the source code, have I really fulfilled my responsibility to not infringe on James' copyright? The difference is copyright versus patents. For copyright, you definitely need to remove it. For patents, I think it was openssh that used to have patented algorithms in the source that you could compile into your binary if you had a license.