Re-using copyrighted code

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Mon, 10 Jun 2013 08:42:07 +0200, Malte Forkel wrote:

> Am 10.06.2013 07:31, schrieb Steven D'Aprano:
>> 
>> But bringing it back to the original topic, I believe that the
>> philosophy of FOSS is that we should try our best to honour the
>> intentions of the writer, not to find some legal loophole that permits
>> us to copy his or her work against their wishes.
>> 
>> 
> Woh! I didn't expect my naive question to trigger that kind of
> discussion. Thanks to all of you.  While I'm grateful for all the input,
> I have to admit I still don't really know what to do yet.
> 
> In addition to asking the PSF, I've written to PythonWare (formerly
> Secret Labs) about their point of view.  I'll report their responses.

In my opinion, this is the right thing to do. And thank you in advance 
for coming back with their responses, if any.


[...]
> Had I known in the beginning how convoluted things would become, I might
> I certainly hope that there is no software out thre that didn't get
> released to the public because its author found the legal implications
> to difficult to handle.


Of course there is. That's the cost of having copyright in the first 
place. Since people can "own" particular chunks of code, or pieces of 
text, there is always the risk that a chunk of code you have written, or 
piece of text, happens to be similar enough to someone else's that you 
are infringing on their copyright.

(One of the most egregious abuses of copyright, in my opinon:

http://tuxdeluxe.org/node/88

Well, actually, there are probably far worse abuses. Men At Work's "Down 
Under" being judged as infringing the Kookaburra children's song is 
worse, since the pieces are as different as it is possible for music to 
be. But the above is one of the funniest egregious abuses of copyright.)

But the trade-off is the hope that by granting monopoly privileges to the 
author, more people will be encouraged to create who otherwise wouldn't 
have, than people will be discouraged.

(Interesting, as much as "the promotion of arts and sciences" has been 
the stated aim of copyright for a couple of centuries now[1], there's no 
actual evidence that it does.)




[1] But not all the way back to the first ever copyright law, which was 
out-and-out a bribe to printers from the British Crown: "don't print 
anything we don't like, and we'll enforce your monopoly to print".


-- 
Steven