Andrei's Google Talk

[Walter Bright]

Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> Maybe, but I'm fairly certain that Walter *has* consulted copyright 
> lawyers about this, and his decision is a reflection of that 
> discussion.  Judging by that, I think we can assume via anecdotal 
> evidence that his position is pretty solid.


I've been involved in copyright infringement cases from both directions, both as 
accused and accuser.

Not having copied code does not guarantee you won't be accused of infringement. 
But doing everything practical to make it hard for others to get traction for 
their case helps avoid very expensive legal bills.

A couple examples:

1. I once got a very grumpy email from a person accusing me of selling his 
software without a license. I dug up an email from him to me that was several 
years old giving me permission, and forwarded that to him. I got a very contrite 
apology back. It pays to keep your old emails.

2. A major corporation contracted me to do some work for them. I did, and they 
shipped it, but refused to pay me. They claimed they "rewrote it from scratch". 
An 'nm' on their binary showed that 95% of the names in the software were 
identical to what I provided them. They folded.

3. A couple of programmers decided that they had created the game Empire. I 
produced registered copyrights that predated their claim of initially writing it 
by 5 years. They folded.

4. Twice I've had people try to trick me into shipping code that *they* stole.

5. I was once accused of stealing A's software, when A had stolen it from me.



This is only some of the crap I've had to put up with. I know many people think 
I'm paranoid and overreact to this. I'm the one who'll get stuck with the legal 
bills, though, so I think I'll stick with being paranoid.

Oh, and saying "I never looked at that source code" is a satisfactory answer to 
a phalanx of corporate copyright lawyers, in my experience.