User: JuliusCaesar42

Re:Um... what?

On: How to Deal With Stolen Code?

200 lines of code, with verbatim comments. Yeah right, that's indistinguishable. Try again. Obviously it IS distinguishable since the article poster noticed the copying. Sheesh, now I recall why I lurk. Everything doesn't have to be an argument. My point was that we, as programmers, DO write and rewrite code that winds up being similar, so the amount of code necessary to show infringement is likely more than a "few lines" and could be as large as 200 lines. I did NOT say that the code that none of us have seen is non-infringing. Since none of us know whether the original author of the code is within the company of the OP, whether license was obtained, or whether the code in question is public domain, making a judgment on some poor code monkey's actions without that knowledge is not only futile, but rather insulting. Remember, the coder in question could be any one of us. I know that I have posted code to forums before, so perhaps I wrote the code. I've also used code legally that another wrote, so I could be the lead in question as well. There is simply not enough known information to make any judgments of anyone's actions. There are other explanations besides the rather biased and paranoid opinion that the guy in charge is obviously some sort code-stealing rip-off artist taking advantage of the downtrodden coders of the world. Withholding judgment is sometimes the proper course of action when the alternative is apparently reactionary assumption of guilt without cause.

Re:Um... what?

On: How to Deal With Stolen Code?

First of all, we're not talking about a few lines of code. Not even a snippet. The poster said it was 200 lines. That's a pretty major chunk. Major chunk? Just *my* part of the project I work on is over 2,000,000 lines of source. 200 lines would then be .01% of that source. While I'm not willing to make any judgements on the situation at hand, given the sparse information and lack of any real background research on the code in question, I wouldn't consider a 200 line routine to be all that big. 200 lines of complicated and exactly math, perhaps, but 200 lines of output formatting or perhaps even a well known algorithm implementation like a shell sort? A lot depends on what the code contains. Thousands of programmers have written 200 line snippets which would be indistinguishable when compared side by side for copyright infringement. Let's face it, there are only so many good shapes for a wheel...