> > Microsoft sues you and samba for copyright infringement among a
> > whole heap of other things.
> > Moral: Don't browse non open source code looking for ideas. If it's not
> > open source then you can't use them.
Don't go through Windows code looking for ideas period. It's a safe bet
you won't find any, certainly not any good ones. While some hackers may
find the idea of fixing Windows' bugs appealing, if Windows is not open
source, it does not deserve the benefits of having many eyeballs look at
their code.
> Is this really the case? Ideas cannot have a copyright placed
> on them... they can be patented, though. Surely it's OK to
> copy a non patented idea.
I think the idea goes something like "you have seen the Windows source code,
therefore you may have subconciously used parts of our Intellectual
Property Windows source code in your own code". I remember a story about the
early days of GNU that programmers were encouraged to forget any AT&T or
commercial code they may have come into contact with. Some of the GNU programs
were optimised for features at the expense of memory whereas most of the
AT&T stuff was optimised for small memory, IIRC this was suggested by RMS as
a way to avoid your code looking like any existing proprietary stuff you
may have seen.
Stuart.
"Starting Java" - the two most feared words on the Internet.
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