Okay, so we've got some complaints about disputed "ownership" issues with material in this section... so I shared some of what I was taught surrounding ownership as it pertains to software when I was studying Computer Science, and the things I've picked up following the OpenSource Initiative in the staff area. I have been asked to make this available to you; so I shall.
Okay... here's the thing.
The fact is, if the source code cannot be evidenced to have been created by 100% "clean room" reverse engineering, then it may be actionable.
What is "clean room"
You simply cannot sue someone under copyright law for distributing functionally equivalent code. If they have used your artwork, sound, graphics, meshes etc. in a completely different program, you can sue them for copyright infringement. But their code must be derived from your code in some way other than "looking at what it does and writing something that does the same job".
You can sue someone under patenting law, if you hold a legal patent on an "idea" and the other persons program implements a sufficiently similar "idea". (Famous case was the patenting of the compression algorithm in the CompuServe GIF file format ,(
To even bring a case to court under patent law, you would need to have a legally registered patent No. or, at the very least a Pat. Pending No. After all the cost of the CopuServ GIF trials, Patenting offices are reluctant to issue patents for software anyway.
A non-software example would be that, H.G. Wells could not sue the writers of "Independence Day" under copyright, or trademark laws, because the story doesn't have the same name, there are no "Tripods", no "Fighting Machines", nobody ever says "oolah", the aliens aren't called "Marsions" etc. He could (where he still alive at the time, and had he patented the "War of the Worlds" "idea") sue them under legal patent, because the story is about the human race being brought to it's military knees by an unknown alien race of vastly superior technology and then freed from captivity and certain death by... "a virus".
The problem with "Trademark" is that it only has to be "proven" in court. So when iNTEL wanted to apply for a "trademark" on the number 586, they where told to "swivel" (figuratively, not literally) because then they could, theoretically, take anyone to court who happened to be issued with a vehicle license plate containing the digits "5", "8" and "6" in sequence anywhere in it... and the court would have to spend time and money proving that it wasn't a commercial vehicle and / or gained no revenue from driving around with that number on it etc. Instead, they named the successor to the 486 "Pentium" and "trademarked" that.
So:-
Nexxon could claim RaGEZONE is "profiting" from having the name "
We could implement an "obscenity filter" to that term? Would make the forum look a mess, and make it hard for MS devs to find us, but it should satisfy the law.
Enforcement of legal "Trademark" is upheld reasonably well the world over. So changing hosts and so on will make little difference if they want to pull that stunt. RZ Devs certainly do not profit financially from their releases, and RZ it's self is not a highly commercial enterprise, but it does need to hold it's balance. Of course it costs money to keep this site up and available, even with the staff donating their time free of charge.
I should also mention, that if I publish a program without any legal copyright, there is nothing to stop Nexxon, Microsoft, Apple, Symantec or any other commercial "I pwn joo 4 $" organisation putting my code in their program and claiming ownership [highlight]and even authorship[/highlight] of my code!!! And they would be in the legal right, and I would have stolen from them, in the eyes of the law, by giving away code I wrote, without copyrighting it to my self.
It is legal for them to take it off me, and call me a thief! :scared:
Sorry, that sounds like the typical Linux nut big uping the GPL, and I know that has it's flaws. I tend to release on RZ with something along the
(whatever makes you comfortable)
I'm not sure how legally sound that is, but it should bring any theft into question. Our posts are dated, which means any thief claiming your code is theirs would have to prove their copyright existed before yours. MentaL could be argued as having falsified those dates, so it doesn't protect RZ until some unrelated database like Google or wayback has it spidered. (they keep their own dates) If you do not upload to RZ (and I gather most releases are not) then the file host should also have a record of the upload date.
[highlight]To releasers[/highlight], I would say, please make sure you own what you are releasing. That may sound silly when you know you wrote it yourself, but legally, it's not. You don't own what you wrote until you have copyrighted it. (in law... or course RZ and I would consider it yours anyway, but the law needs it documented)
So if RZ has to delete your release because you didn't put a disclaimer on it claiming full ownership and rights to distribute... well, just don't say we didn't warn you.
Finally, I know everyone here is unhappy about this hostile action, and believe me we know you have all tried to act in good faith. But some people aren't happy with "the spirit of the law", they want "the letter of the law". Believe it or not, the "letter of the law" isn't actually all that fair. And, sadly, we must comply.
I hope you will respect this friendly word of advise for what it is.
Okay... here's the thing.
- You cannot sue someone for distributing (releasing) source code, or compiled executables they wrote themselves, which contains no verbatim copy of code you own copyright on.
- You can sue someone for distributing source code which is verbatim copy of code you have copyrighted.
- You can sue someone for distributing source or binary versions of code equivalent to code you have [highlight]patented[/highlight].
The fact is, if the source code cannot be evidenced to have been created by 100% "clean room" reverse engineering, then it may be actionable.
What is "clean room"
"Clean room" reverse engineering requires that you create software which is functionally equivalent to another software without ever having seen the source code, or disassembled / decompiled (even in your head from the raw binary etc.) the original program.
The only "template" you can use to base your code on, is your perception of how the program is behaving, and through feeding it comprehensive "test data" to prove the output for any given input.
The grey area comes when one person looks at the code, sketches out a Venn diagram or some pseudo code, (nothing too specific) creates a test data set that will (because he's seen the code) tell everyone when they have their code exactly equivalent and another person creates source code from the information provided by the first.
That scenario is still, strictly speaking, "clean room". However, it becomes difficult to prove it. Because your proof is usually based around pointing out, in no uncertain terms, to people who have no understanding of what makes code the same, or different, that your code is not the same as the copyright holders.
The only "template" you can use to base your code on, is your perception of how the program is behaving, and through feeding it comprehensive "test data" to prove the output for any given input.
The grey area comes when one person looks at the code, sketches out a Venn diagram or some pseudo code, (nothing too specific) creates a test data set that will (because he's seen the code) tell everyone when they have their code exactly equivalent and another person creates source code from the information provided by the first.
That scenario is still, strictly speaking, "clean room". However, it becomes difficult to prove it. Because your proof is usually based around pointing out, in no uncertain terms, to people who have no understanding of what makes code the same, or different, that your code is not the same as the copyright holders.
You can sue someone under patenting law, if you hold a legal patent on an "idea" and the other persons program implements a sufficiently similar "idea". (Famous case was the patenting of the compression algorithm in the CompuServe GIF file format ,(
To view the content, you need to sign in or register
) putting many OpenSource file archivers on the shelf, allowing Zip to become standard, even though it's not as good as... LhA, Lzh, Arc, ARJ etc. etc.) They never actually won any significant court case though.To even bring a case to court under patent law, you would need to have a legally registered patent No. or, at the very least a Pat. Pending No. After all the cost of the CopuServ GIF trials, Patenting offices are reluctant to issue patents for software anyway.
A non-software example would be that, H.G. Wells could not sue the writers of "Independence Day" under copyright, or trademark laws, because the story doesn't have the same name, there are no "Tripods", no "Fighting Machines", nobody ever says "oolah", the aliens aren't called "Marsions" etc. He could (where he still alive at the time, and had he patented the "War of the Worlds" "idea") sue them under legal patent, because the story is about the human race being brought to it's military knees by an unknown alien race of vastly superior technology and then freed from captivity and certain death by... "a virus".
The problem with "Trademark" is that it only has to be "proven" in court. So when iNTEL wanted to apply for a "trademark" on the number 586, they where told to "swivel" (figuratively, not literally) because then they could, theoretically, take anyone to court who happened to be issued with a vehicle license plate containing the digits "5", "8" and "6" in sequence anywhere in it... and the court would have to spend time and money proving that it wasn't a commercial vehicle and / or gained no revenue from driving around with that number on it etc. Instead, they named the successor to the 486 "Pentium" and "trademarked" that.
So:-
- Copyright = must be a "verbatim copy"
- Trademark = must be proven to be "profiting" from trading under that name
- Patent = must be proven only to be "equivalent" in basic design
Nexxon could claim RaGEZONE is "profiting" from having the name "
To view the content, you need to sign in or register
", on his website, since they hold a legal trademark on that title.We could implement an "obscenity filter" to that term? Would make the forum look a mess, and make it hard for MS devs to find us, but it should satisfy the law.
Enforcement of legal "Trademark" is upheld reasonably well the world over. So changing hosts and so on will make little difference if they want to pull that stunt. RZ Devs certainly do not profit financially from their releases, and RZ it's self is not a highly commercial enterprise, but it does need to hold it's balance. Of course it costs money to keep this site up and available, even with the staff donating their time free of charge.
I should also mention, that if I publish a program without any legal copyright, there is nothing to stop Nexxon, Microsoft, Apple, Symantec or any other commercial "I pwn joo 4 $" organisation putting my code in their program and claiming ownership [highlight]and even authorship[/highlight] of my code!!! And they would be in the legal right, and I would have stolen from them, in the eyes of the law, by giving away code I wrote, without copyrighting it to my self.
It is legal for them to take it off me, and call me a thief! :scared:
Sorry, that sounds like the typical Linux nut big uping the GPL, and I know that has it's flaws. I tend to release on RZ with something along the
To view the content, you need to sign in or register
disclaimer... and add a notice that RaGEZONE is the place I would like you to do your sharing.
I'm not sure how legally sound that is, but it should bring any theft into question. Our posts are dated, which means any thief claiming your code is theirs would have to prove their copyright existed before yours. MentaL could be argued as having falsified those dates, so it doesn't protect RZ until some unrelated database like Google or wayback has it spidered. (they keep their own dates) If you do not upload to RZ (and I gather most releases are not) then the file host should also have a record of the upload date.
[highlight]To releasers[/highlight], I would say, please make sure you own what you are releasing. That may sound silly when you know you wrote it yourself, but legally, it's not. You don't own what you wrote until you have copyrighted it. (in law... or course RZ and I would consider it yours anyway, but the law needs it documented)
So if RZ has to delete your release because you didn't put a disclaimer on it claiming full ownership and rights to distribute... well, just don't say we didn't warn you.
Finally, I know everyone here is unhappy about this hostile action, and believe me we know you have all tried to act in good faith. But some people aren't happy with "the spirit of the law", they want "the letter of the law". Believe it or not, the "letter of the law" isn't actually all that fair. And, sadly, we must comply.
I hope you will respect this friendly word of advise for what it is.
Last edited by a moderator: