Is Wizard-Code a Derived Work?

Posted by Cliff on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @09:30AM from the careful-with-code-generators dept.

worldcitizen asks: "Now, with all the noise from the SCO case regarding copyrights, what constitutes a derivative work and who owns what, a question started creeping up: What would happen if Microsoft starts claiming copyright infringement or other Intellectual Property claims in the wizard-inserted code that Visual C++ generates? Would it be possible that even the simplest 'Hello, world' is tainted? Copyrights don't even require uniform enforcement. Could they selectively enforce it on Free Software projects for Windows that have used VC++ for development? Could they license it in such a way that makes it illegal to use Visual C++ for Free Software? Should this be a wake-up call to never use Visual C++ unless you have a cross-licensing agreement with Microsoft (obviously not for Free Software projects)?"

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Re:Code Wizards suck anyway. by Electrum · 2003-07-30 10:14 · Score: 4, Informative

Code wizards are way more trouble than they're worth anyway. Especially with GUI designers, the code they generate is totally un-maintainable.

You've obviously never used Borland Delphi or C++Builder. Those products are an excellent example of a GUI builder / RAD done correctly. They don't screw up if you change the code and don't make the code unmaintainable. I can't imagine a more productive environment for GUI development.