Yep, I'm old... back around 1982-1983 I was working on:
- Apple IIc and IIe writing game software in 6502 assembly,
- Perkin-Elmer minicomputers writing market data distribution software in FORTRAN,
- IBM PC writing trading software in PASCAL 1.0
The Apple was the most fun and the least profitable.
When the Mac was first introduced, Apple wanted developers to develop on the Lisa and target for the Mac -- this made the cost of entry for Mac developers much higher than it had previously been with the Apple II series and changed the developer landscape for quite some time (forever?).
If the kid is unsuccessful in life, the parents will blame it on the "system" and its lack of flexibility.
If the kid succeeds, they'll say it was in spite of the required education.
I hear he's going to be working on the next truly
world-changing technology: a followup to his
initial success --
Just when you thought it was safe....
VI-2 !!!
Re:A different precedent from 1994?
on
USL vs BSDI Documents
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The key differences here are:
1) The product was a set of application programs, albeit a fairly complex one, instead of an operating system with known public interfaces, include-files, etc.
2) The company (ASC) did convince the judge that it made all reasonable efforts to protect it's trade secrets by keeping the source code under pretty tight control. In the UNIX case, large amounts of the code were available/known to the public, so it seems unclear if any trade-secret protection could be claimed.
It would have been absolutely OK if SAI had "derived" a new product based only on it's knowledge of the functionality or public interfaces of BRASS. Instead, they actually took a copy of the source code and used parts of it in their derivation. This is what made it actionable... IMO, there's nothing wrong with reverse engineering a product... So, if Linux/BSD/whatever all use either new source code, or copies of publicly available (non-copyrighted, non-trade-secret) source code, then there shouldn't be any issue.
In November, 1994 I was a plaintiff's expert witness in the case of Automated Securities Clearance(ASC) vs. Securities Application Applications (SAI), Inc. We (ASC) contended that SAI had misappropriated trade secrets by taking source code of the popular BRASS Nasdaq trading system and developing a competing product.
By examining the source code of the 2 systems, I was able to find a very small amount (several hundred lines out of about 500,000) of identical code, some with identical comments, formatting, etc. However, in our case, we successfully argued that this small amount wasn't the extent of the damage, rather it was the dna fingerprint that proved that the original BRASS code was used as a "reference" for the competing product -- and that the extent of the misappropriation was well beyond the actual duplicate lines shown as evidence (especially since the identical lines were at a low-level infrastructure layer which we argued was necessary for anything else to work...)
The judge agreed -- imposing an injunction on SAI, and as punitive damages imposing an additional injunction.... essentially putting SAI out of business. The case isn't 100% relevant given some pretty bad conduct of the SAI folks (ex-ASC employees) and the judge's finding that they had been "disingenuous" on the stand, but it does provide some precendent for small amounts of code being used to 'prove' a larger infringement.
In particular, the judge found that identical comments do have value -- representing 'trial and error', evolution, or labor that went into the original and that was used to advantage by the copier. This holds true even for copied 'dead code' that is never even executed.
IANAL, but those interested should consult the records of the Superior Court of NJ, Chancery Division, Hudson County, Docket # C-28-94.
In a strange coincidence, the lawyers for the defendant (SAI) were "Crummy, Del Deo, Dolan...." -- the same firm that was on the other side for the USL vs. BSDI case (I just noticed from Dennis Ritchie's links...) ~
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- Apple IIc and IIe writing game software in 6502 assembly,
- Perkin-Elmer minicomputers writing market data distribution software in FORTRAN,
- IBM PC writing trading software in PASCAL 1.0
The Apple was the most fun and the least profitable.
When the Mac was first introduced, Apple wanted developers to develop on the Lisa and target for the Mac -- this made the cost of entry for Mac developers much higher than it had previously been with the Apple II series and changed the developer landscape for quite some time (forever?).
If the kid is unsuccessful in life, the parents will blame it on the "system" and its lack of flexibility. If the kid succeeds, they'll say it was in spite of the required education.
Years ago, when writing lots of S/360 BAL, I'd often be able to use the following
comments for sections of assembler code:
go forward,
move ahead,
try to detect it,
it's not too late
to whip it
whip it good!
These days, my favorite comment
is:
# Don't touch this unless you know WTF you're doing!
Which, of course, is no comment at all....
I hear he's going to be working on the next truly world-changing technology: a followup to his initial success -- Just when you thought it was safe.... VI-2 !!!
The key differences here are:
1) The product was a set of application programs, albeit a fairly complex one, instead of an operating system with known public interfaces, include-files, etc.
2) The company (ASC) did convince the judge that it made all reasonable efforts to protect it's trade secrets by keeping the source code under pretty tight control. In the UNIX case, large amounts of the code were available/known to the public, so it seems unclear if any trade-secret protection could be claimed.
It would have been absolutely OK if SAI had "derived" a new product based only on it's knowledge of the functionality or public interfaces of BRASS. Instead, they actually took a copy of the source code and used parts of it in their derivation. This is what made it actionable... IMO, there's nothing wrong with reverse engineering a product... So, if Linux/BSD/whatever all use either new source code, or copies of publicly available (non-copyrighted, non-trade-secret) source code, then there shouldn't be any issue.
In November, 1994 I was a plaintiff's expert witness in the
.... essentially putting
case of Automated Securities Clearance(ASC) vs. Securities Application
Applications (SAI), Inc. We (ASC) contended that SAI had misappropriated
trade secrets by taking source code of the popular BRASS Nasdaq trading
system and developing a competing product.
By examining the source code of the 2 systems, I was able to find
a very small amount (several hundred lines out of about 500,000) of
identical code, some with identical comments, formatting, etc.
However, in our case, we successfully argued that this small amount wasn't
the extent of the damage, rather it was the dna fingerprint that
proved that the original BRASS code was used as a "reference" for
the competing product -- and that the extent of the misappropriation
was well beyond the actual duplicate lines shown as evidence (especially
since the identical lines were at a low-level infrastructure layer
which we argued was necessary for anything else to work...)
The judge agreed -- imposing an injunction on SAI, and as punitive
damages imposing an additional injunction
SAI out of business. The case isn't 100% relevant given some pretty
bad conduct of the SAI folks (ex-ASC employees) and the judge's finding
that they had been "disingenuous" on the stand, but it does provide some
precendent for small amounts of code being used to 'prove' a larger
infringement.
In particular, the judge found that identical comments do have value --
representing 'trial and error', evolution, or labor that went into the
original and that was used to advantage by the copier. This holds
true even for copied 'dead code' that is never even executed.
IANAL, but those interested should consult the records of the
Superior Court of NJ, Chancery Division, Hudson County, Docket # C-28-94.
In a strange coincidence, the lawyers for the defendant (SAI) were
"Crummy, Del Deo, Dolan...." -- the same firm that was on the other side
for the USL vs. BSDI case (I just noticed from Dennis Ritchie's links...)
~