[sldev] Re: [PROTOCOL] Protocol Documentation

[Lawson English]

Dale Glass wrote:
> On Wednesday 03 October 2007 22:53:15 Adam Frisby wrote:
>   
>> Well, a more liberal license isnt a problem there since it doesnt matter
>> if you use the copyright elsewhere or not.
>>     
>
> The BSD people disagree.
>
> See the recent flamewar between the Linux and OpenBSD people. 
>   
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I think its more a flamewar by the GPL people against the FreeBSD people 
BECAUSE the FreeBSD people want to do something against the spirit of 
the GPL.

First came an intent counter to the spirit of the GPL and then a license 
to allow that intent to legally manifest in source.


I'm still not sure why the GPL itself would require "clean room" 
practices to copy *functionality*, even into a proprietary bit of code. 
I guess to avoid the taint of potential contamination by copying text 
verbatim rather than merely grabbing ideas...? As long as you don't do 
huge amounts of cutting and pasting, and stick to your own variable and 
function [re]naming scheme,  when you do cut and paste, I can't see how 
legal issues would apply unless you were really careless when renaming 
or really liberal in how much cutting and pasting you actually did.


Lawson