[sldev] Fwd: [Opensim-dev] Violating the GPL by looking (Re: Voice Module)

Deryck Hodge deryck at samba.org
Wed Mar 19 09:37:40 PDT 2008


On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 10:53 AM, Tateru Nino <tateru.nino at gmail.com> wrote:
>  Essentially correct, yes. The issue is derived code.
>

Thanks, Tateru, for the confirmation. :-)

>  However take SCO vs (well, everyone) as an example. In a limited grammar
>  there are limited ways to express algorithms.
>

[snip]

>  Who is the burden of proof on, in this case?

A good example, with SCO, but a different issue, IMHO.

SCO sued initially over trade secrets violations and only later
amended to say that the issue was breach of contract over
sub-licensing and copyright infringement. While SCO has made everyone
a little jumpy, they were suing over largely "intellectual property"
issues, not license infringement.

In the hypotheticals mentioned here, LL would have to sue saying that
some piece of code was derived from GPL code and then violated the GPL
by the derivative work not being released under the GPL. Like you say,
you would have to actually look at code side-by-side and see if you
could prove this.  The burden of proof would be on LL since they would
be the ones bringing the suit. You could, of course, use exposure to
code to try to prove that the GPLed code was used as a basis for the
non-GPL code. But that's a slightly different case than what is being
feared here.

What is being suggested by the original questions here, is not that
code B is a derivative of code A, but that developer X stole
"intellectual property" from code A by simply reading the code. I
think by any lawyer's interpretation, that is a hard case to fight and
win given the nature of open source, regardless of which license is
used.

Cheers,
deryck

-- 
Deryck Hodge
Senior Programmer
Washington Post.Newsweek Interactive
Samba Team
http://www.devurandom.org/
Anders Falworth in Second Life


More information about the SLDev mailing list