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Subject: Re: What constitutes a clone?

Author: Dann Corbit

Date: 21:41:34 02/15/05

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On February 16, 2005 at 00:36:30, Pallav Nawani wrote:

>On February 15, 2005 at 20:48:56, Charles Roberson wrote:
>
>>On February 15, 2005 at 19:31:58, Dann Corbit wrote:
>>
>>>On February 15, 2005 at 18:38:43, John Merlino wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>However, you can use the algorithms.  Just not the code.  What that means
>>>exactly will differ somewhat (perhaps) due to personal opinions.
>>>
>>
>
>>    Years ago, there was what some would call legal corporate theft.
>>   I suppose it still happens but I heard about in the 1980's far more
>
>If I recall correctly, this is not necessary. You can take an oppenents product
>and take it apart to learn how it works, and then use the knowledge in your
>products. I think this is legal in USA, and it is called 'reverse engineering'.
>This is how IBM's original chip design for motherboards was copied and the PCs
>spread like wildfire.

The cloning of PC-Bios chips and even MS-DOS came from the following method:
1.  Someone gets an instance of the thing that they want to copy.
2.  They pull it apart/dissassemble it/figure out how it works
3.  They write a specification of what it does and how it does it
4.  The hand the specification to another team.
5.  Using the specification, they new team duplicates the functionality.

I don't know if that practice is still legal, but that is what they did.
Smells a little seedy to me, but there we are then.

>>    the web. So, maybe open source should be reconsidered. I've heard of
>>    people trying to sale open source code off as their own work for money.
>
>People can't claim that they've made those open source programs, but they can
>still sell them for $. The Licenses allow it. For example if someone wants to
>sell Natwarlal, he/she can, and I can't do a thing about it, since I have
>released it with MIT license. Of course, I still have the option of not
>releasing the future versions as open source.
>
>Pallav
>
>
>
>>
>>    If one is going to actually have "their own" program, then stay away
>>    from open source code.
>>
>>      Not to mention, it gets dull seeing freshman questions here from people
>>     that have a program as strong as Crafty.
>>
>>     Charles



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