Legal/Permission Question

[Sean Kelly]

Walter Bright wrote:
> 
> If you're going to clone a function, you can't use someone else's 
> copyrighted code as a guide. Even just looking at it could cause 
> 'taint', which is why I never look at or work on gcc.

The whole situation is kind of a mess.  Say a programmer creates a 
parser for one company and then later is hired by another company for 
which he also produces a parser.  Assuming the first company retains the 
rights to the parser created there, the programmer has no way to avoid 
'taint'.  Worse, a person tends to solve a given problem in a consistent 
fashion, so two applications created from scratch by the same person 
will naturally have structural similarities.  And whether or not a case 
concerning this could hold up in court, there is enough confusion about 
copyright law that it can actually come up.  Truth be told, I've 
considered leaving the professional software sector altogether and do 
this purely as a hobby simply to avoid such issues.


Sean