[SLUG-POL] Open-Source and copyright protection

From: Robert Haeckl (rhaeckl@tampabay.rr.com)
Date: Mon Mar 18 2002 - 20:52:19 EST


I'd like to start a thread that discusses the inherent difficulties with
opening source and still protecting the creators investment and
potential profit. This has nothing to do with other issues about the
legality of copying and sharing binaries via whatever means. It's about
one agent using the code of another and claiming it as their own. I
think that software development should not have to rely on services to
make a profit, and at the same time, users of such software should have
the choice to repair as necessary and screen for unexpected behavior.

I don't want to get into any ideological veins such as programs
inherently build on the work of prior development, hence nothing can be
claimed as original. I don't believe basic structure and algorithms in
general should be copyright protected. But at some level, there must be
a way to say that such-in-such source code contains a substantial amount
of code that is identifiably the same as that in another program's
source code. This implies that at some level of complexity, software can
be considered unique and original.

A simple diff wouldn't provide the means to do this because naming
schemes, comments, and general syntax could be easily modified. So my
first question would be, "is there a present means to compare source
code and measure similarities in a reproducible and standardized fashion
_and_ detect methods of circumvention?" Something along the lines of
DNA sequencing that would hold up under legal scrutiny.

-Robert



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