Author: Slater Wold
Date: 00:34:03 10/14/01
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GPL is a good idea, in theory......... Whenever you publish your code, no matter what "license" you put under it, there is a serious threat that it's going to be hacked. 2 good examples: Crafty: Without a doubt, the best open source chess project in the world. This is not distributed under the GPL (as far as I know) but has been copyrighted by Bob. There are more hacked Crafty's running around, than anyone can count. I don't *think* this upsets Bob too terribly bad, as most people make it worse, instead of better. TSCP: This is probably one of the most simple chess programs in circulation today. And I know people have hacked its code; I've even seen one running on a chess server. Plain and simple, you publish your code, someone is going to take it and (try) to improve on it. And even with the GPL, it's hard to try to detour, or stop this. The company I work for has recently been to court over something that pertains to this matter. We design and sell medical office, hospital, and in general, healthcare software. The company I work for bought out a smaller competitor about a year ago. Well, some people from the company that got bought out, had the code to this software, and they thought they would just slap a new name on it, change it around, and sell it basically as another product. Of course my company sued them for copyright infringement. Guess what? They lost. Seems the law says that a computer program only needs to be 40% different, to be considered "unique". They had a mathematician/programmer come in, and basically declare that the code had indeed changed over 40%. Mind you, this was ONLY the code. Not the interface, or functions. This is _NOT_ open source software. And they got away with it. If anyone besides yourself has the code to your product, there is a risk. And there's not much you can do. Someone just needs to be creative, and smart enough to get around anything you will be able to do. Slate
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