That's true. If you want to protect ideas, then use patents.Not everything can be patentable, though. And in my opinion, software algorythms lie on this range of things that can't be patented. I have even heard of a case in the U.S. where an integer number was patented. This is an absurdity and immoral, because the laws of nature (and the integers) preexisted before it was patented.
I agree, and worse, it's in many interesting cases useless. Just think what would be the use to do this to the Linux kernel, whereas the major benefit is that you have a lot of programmers worldwide working "for free" in the project: patching and improving.And as far as lifting the actual code, well, unfortunately for
those who think licenses offer good protection against direct
theft, I can tell you that competent and reasonably talented
programmers -- of which I am one along with others on this list,
not to mention an easy million off-list -- who are so motivated
could take existing source code and mask, tweak, and otherwise
modify it sufficiently to protect it against almost any legal
challenge of copyright infringement decided by judges or juries.
Masking, tweaking and modifying is not an easy task. It can be a lot of work (imagine tweaking the Linux kernel, or GCC), I don't know if it's worth. Making an automate program to do the work can lead to a condemnation if this is proved.
Aitor
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