revOnline and Open Source

[Dr. Hawkins]

On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 3:25 AM, Mark Schonewille
<m.schonewille at economy-x-talk.com> wrote:


> I would think that it is clear to users that sharing code (rather than
> stacks) in the code section of RevOnline, implies that people can use it to
> learn from. Copying and using it would violate copyright,

I think the downloader using it is implied as a permission, too--but
not his copying for someone else, paid or not.

> but studying the
> code and reverse-engineering it would be a form of "fair use" because one
> may reasonably presume that people are aware of the learning function of the
> code section.

Reverse engineering has it's own rules I don't even pretend to
understand.  It's typically done by two isolated teams; one makes a
definition from studying it, while the "clean" team writes new code
from scratch (e.g., the Phoenix bios of the 8088 days).

> Copyright doesn't protect ideas. That's what patents are for.

Nope.

There's nothing for ideas.  Patents cover implementations and methods.


-- 
Dr. Richard E. Hawkins, Esq.
(702) 508-8462