copyright infringement question

[Kay C Lan]

Not a lawyer either (although ended up in court too many times), nor a
commercial software developer - so take what I say with a grain of salt, but
basically with Richard and Chipp on this one.

How do you think the Japanese go so good at making cars; by buying examples
of the competition and driving, examining and testing them to the very
limits, and then deciding where to do it better (and probably cheaper).
First reliability, then handling, then performance and finally style - but
lets face it, most cars either have a twin or a triplet these days, you know
exactly which make/model is competing with which make/model.

I think it really comes down to how you approach it, the Japanese way (very
generalized term here - don't mean to offend anyone) to examine, study and
then say OK, let's build a better gearbox, better engine and better air
conditioner. Then there is the pirate option; OK lets copy this gearbox,
engine and air conditioner using cheap material and labour.

I do find this statement from Richard a little surprising, especially
considering another recent post:

On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 11:22 PM, Richard Gaskin <ambassador at fourthworld.com>
wrote:

> But as a software designer, my only question about reverse engineering
> would be, "Why bother?"
>
> Software is expensive to write, and the only software worth writing is
> that which hasn't been written before.  It's almost always more
> cost-effective to simply buy an existing software than to reproduce it.


I would think GLX2 is a perfect example. Gee it has a script field just like
Rev's; has Run, Trace and Step just like Rev's; script colourization and a
Handler menu just like Rev's; and blimey, Rev's is FREE and you want me to
pay money for GLX2. Yet there is clearly a large number of people on this
list who vote with their wallet. I may be wrong, and Jerry will probably
correct me, but I imagine it is an intimate knowledge of all that is wrong
with the Rev script editor; plus an excellent knowledge/focus on efficiency,
that makes GLX2 such a compelling product. So has Rev taken legal action
against Jerry?

Of course the other argument could be that there may be a hundred Win
examples out there, but none for the Mac. So again, IMHO, having a look at
the best of the Win products to aggregate the best of the best would seem to
be a very sensible path to maximize the chance of developing a successful
Mac version.

I don't know who said "know thy enemy", but I think it applies in this case:
which I think is what Richard was really getting at; know, not copy;
improve, not repeat; understand, not underestimate.

My 0.08 cents and worth less every day.