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Subject: Re: Well said !!

Author: Slater Wold

Date: 13:58:02 02/15/04

Go up one level in this thread


On February 15, 2004 at 16:51:28, Dann Corbit wrote:

>On February 15, 2004 at 16:47:14, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On February 15, 2004 at 16:07:11, Dann Corbit wrote:
>>
>>>On February 15, 2004 at 15:52:35, Matthias Gemuh wrote:
>>>
>>>>On February 15, 2004 at 15:07:39, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>Here we disagree.  I see nothing wrong with starting from some known point, so
>>>>>long as you eventually end up with nothing but your own code...  Otherwise you
>>>>>will spend a long time writing all the support stuff, and many lose interest
>>>>>before they get far enough along to actually see their creation play any real
>>>>>chess...
>>>>>
>>>>>IE this is where "C" came from.  Changes to "B".  Etc...
>>>
>>>Let's suppose that somehere in the process, your algorithms looked considerably
>>>similar to the ones that you started with.
>>>
>>>Then you let people use your program.  Someone noticed that some data arrays in
>>>your program were the same as in his.
>>>
>>>A big brew-ha-ha starts.
>>>
>>>Apparently the crime committed is that enough changes were not committed yet to
>>>make it unrecognizable.
>>>
>>>I do not think that this is the path that DanChess did.  Rather, he took ideas
>>>from crafty and grafted the algorithms into his program.  In doing so, he had to
>>>make changes to each idea that he adopted.
>>>
>>>This is somehow seen as a great crime, but the other not?
>>>
>>>Puzzling to me.  It is the copy/replace scheme that seems criminal to me.  And
>>>the adoption of ideas that seems totally harmless.
>>
>>
>>I'll remind you once again, I copied _lots_ of ideas over the years, from
>>various people like Slate, Thompson, et. al.  But I have never copied _any_
>>source code from anyone...
>>
>>This is about source, not about ideas.  They are different.
>>
>>I would have no problem whatsoever with DanChess had he did what he did, but
>>then evolved things to be significantly different _before_ starting to
>>distribute it as an original chess program.
>
>You bring up an interesting point.  Not about copyright and not about
>algorithms.  But about ownership.  Not ownership of ideas or algorithms or
>source code, but ownership of a system.  The question is this:
>
>I started with system x and made systematic changes to arrive at system y.
>
>At what point does system x.n on the way to becomeing system y become "mine" as
>opposed to the original owner of system x?
>
>I have no idea how such a determination might be made.

The Supreme Court came up with this standard long ago.

The new system has to make the work easier, and be more effecient.  Period.

http://www2.law.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/foliocgi.exe/patentcases/query=[Group+383us1:]([level+case+citation:]|[level+case+elements:])/doc/{@1}/hit_headings/words=4/hits_only?



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