What to do if you're involved in code-dispute litigation (NewsForge) [LWN.net]

What to do if you're involved in code-dispute litigation (NewsForge)

Posted Oct 4, 2004 19:12 UTC (Mon) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]

Just from the headlines:

"If you run a sloppy project, you're asking for trouble."

How come is that ??... is all ideas patented already ??... And if you are a commercial or pseudo-commercial like some freeware *dont you have to be SLOPPY somehow too*,... or do all those projects deep research about patents !?... to only conclude that *there could be worst than a letter soup*, with crap, semi-crap, impossibility to apply in all countrys, dead inventors with cross licensors (like SCO) that think that everything is theirs,... geez... the money to even start really to get te points of this things could be several orders of magnitude the price of the project...hein??... it would be nice to ask Microsoft for their patent research papers of their projects before buying anything from them!?... no??...

"If you don't know who contributed each piece of code, how to contact them, and when the code was contributed, then you are not properly documenting your work "

Good point. And that is why the idea of strong standards,... expandable standards, but strong anyway, makes a lot of sense. Because if you follow the standards you are much less likely to find that a "YURI" has deliberatly torpeded your project... and it dosent have to be a "contract" from a specialist in kicks in the groin like Microsoft...
Contrary to the vision here: http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=8304
the world is runned by big white sharks, and like the seals if they dont stay togheter, they will be easy prey... and IMO "we" shouldn't applaud being proudly alone and free in name of choice(egoism?), and dinner for white sharks,... sorry but it seems a delusional, if not daring to say a stupid, form of choice...
And in a community, any community, the most praisable concern is not one itch, but first the community itch,... otherwise it dosent make sense a community... and Linux community has already the sickness of any big institution where the big players are trying to influence programming to better apply their political and commercial agendas... separate policy from implementation... right!!

"you'll also want to form a committee to deal with potential infringement claims"

Yes the only sensible one is "Patent Busting" in http://www.eff.org/patent/
it is a real superior effort, than any other kind of protection you might consider. Otherwise i prefer, and advise, to change interely the project or drop it... but that is my opinion.

What to do if you're involved in code-dispute litigation (NewsForge)

Posted Oct 4, 2004 19:54 UTC (Mon) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

I think you need to take some time before posting. I could hardly understand your sentence structure or ideas.

There are several reasons to follow these issues and not all dealing with 'patents'.

But first to answer your question: Are all ideas patented? Probably.
You are guilty until proven innocent in many courts when dealing with patents. Not much you can do that other than live the life of the Amish (although their 16th century 'buttons' have probably been repatented by some company).

The main reason is that sloppy projects are trouble is due to code getting put into the project illegally. Putting in GPL licensed code into a BSD licensed project doesnt mean that the code is all GPL'd. It means that you have to figure out what code is not licensed correctly, and removing it. Taking that code you found on a download site that belonged originally to Cisco doesnt mean its ok to put it in your project. It means that your code is now ready for a criminal and civil suit.