I just don't see how it's relevant whether he did look or didn't. In my opinion, it's not just legally valid to make a re-implementation of something if you've seen the code as long as it doesn't copy expressive elements. I think it's also ethically fine as well to use source code as a reference for re-implementing something as long as it doesn't turn into an exact translation.

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simonw 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Right. The alternative is that we reward Dan for his 14 years of volunteer maintenance of a project... by banning him from working on anything similar under a different license for the rest of his life.

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atomicnumber3 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's actually not legally fine, or at least it's extremely dangerous. Projects that re-implement APIs presented by extremely litigious companies specifically do not allow people who, for instance, have seen the proprietary source code to then work on the project.

	▲	jpc0 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I don't think fear or legal action makes it illegal. If I know it is legal to make a turn at a red light. And I know a court will uphold that I was in the right but a police officer will fine me regardless and I would need to go to actually pursue some legal remedy I'm unlikely to do it regardless of whether it is legal because it is expensive, if not in money but time. In the case of copyright lawsuits they are notoriously expensive and long so even if a court would eventually deem it fine, why take the chance.
	▲	sunshowers an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		My understanding is that that is a maximalist position for the avoidance of risk, and is sufficient but probably not necessary.

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sarchertech 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Ignoring the legal or ethical concerns. Let’s say we live in a world where the cost of copying code is so close to zero that it’s indistinguishable from a world without copyright.

Anything you put out can and will be used by whatever giant company wants to use it with no attribution whatsoever.

Doesn’t that massively reduce the incentive to release the source of anything ever?

	▲	satvikpendem an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		No, because (most) people don't work on OSS for vanity, they do it to help other people, whether it's individuals or groups of individuals, ie corporations. It's the same question as, if an AI can generate "art", or photographers can capture a scene better than any (realistic) painter, then will people still create art? Obviously yes, and we see it of course after Stable Diffusion was released three years ago, people are still creating.
	▲	pocksuppet 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Yes, and it reduces the incentives to release binaries too. Such a world will be populated by almost entirely SaaS, which can still compete on freedom.
	▲	intrasight 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Most commercial software that I've used has the model of a legal moat around a pretty crappy database schema. The non IP protection has largely been in the effort involved in replicating an application's behavior and that effort is dropping precipitously.