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Microsoft and opening the code: damned if you do, damned if you don't
time to read 1 min | 100 words
Here is another perspective of the results of making the source available. At that point, Microsoft really doesn't have a good way to get out of it. People want to get the source (I am one of them), but at the same time, they are fearful of legal actions as a result of looking at the source and doing any sort of development (again, I am one of them).
What is required is trust, and Microsoft is still paying for its actions of old (and its actions as of few months ago, patents & OSS, for example) in that regard.
Comments
Any programmer would be crazy to look at any source published by Microsoft.
Did I read the notion that Microsoft is releasing framework source code just so they can entrap the Mono crew?
Cmon now thats just bizarre slashdot garbage.
Microsoft isnt good nor evil, they are simply after money. Thats the way its always been.
If you want philanthropy, visit the Bill Gates Foundation, microsoft is for money.
Frans Bouma has a post about why this is bad and the implications for looking at the source, IANAL but what he says makes sense and definately makes you think twice about it.
http://weblogs.asp.net/fbouma/archive/2007/10/04/don-t-look-at-the-sourcecode-of-net-licensed-under-the-reference-license.aspx
Frans is missing the point just as much as everyone else that is bitching about this. The risk of violating a patent or copyright is unchanged:
An invention off the top of your head can still violate a patent.
A clean room implementation based on public interfaces can still violate a patent.
A reflector-reverse-engineered implementation can still violate a patent.
Any of the above types of implementation after having read the original source could still violate a patent no differently than if you hadn't read the source.
violating a patent and/or copyright == violating a patent and/or copyright
not violating a patent and/or copyright == not violating a patent and/or copyright
Nothing has changed. Now we can just breakpoint on and/or step into source before either violating or not violating a patent. :)
Well said, Jeremy.
Justice,
No, there is a marked difference between patent and copyright.
I am going to write a post about those distinction shortly
I was waiting for someone to post up mentioning the difference between a patent and a copyright :), and I already had the following queued up for a reply:
Given the ease of someone modifying their source code to either look more like or less like someone else's published code, all while maintaining identical functionality, if someone comes after you at all it'll be for the patent violation.
Only the patent part matters, but since previous posts and replies mentioned copyright, I lumped it in from the perspective that a copyright violation still equals a copyright violation and that a lack of a copyright violation still equals a lack of copyright violation.
If you wish, you can envision my previous:
violating a patent and/or copyright == violating a patent and/or copyright
not violating a patent and/or copyright == not violating a patent and/or copyright
as:
violating a patent == violating a patent
not violating a patent == not violating a patent
violating a copyright == violating a copyright
not violating a copyright == not violating a copyright
I suppose that's what I get for compressing things down to save typing time. :)
Jeremy: you miss the point. It's not about preventing you trap on a patent, that's indeed unavoidable. What you want is that you protect yourself from the accusations that you based your work on the work of somebody else: if you end up in court in a patent lawsuit, and you've never looked at MS' sourcecode, your code will differ. They then can't accuse you that you've had access to THEIR code and that you had the oppertunity to copy it, because you didn't have that access as you didn't accept the license nor looked at the code.
Your logic also says that what Mono and other high-profile open source projects demand from their committers, namely that every committer doesn't look at any MS or other proprietry code, is flawed. It's based on the exact same reasoning: protect yourself from accusations that you DID copy something, because you could.
I also don't get why people think I was merging copyright and patent law, they're not the same.
But I disgress: if you want to look at the code, do so, I don't care. I just wrote the post to enlighten people of the downsides of clicking OK, and what you give away by accepting the license. If you're fine with that, go ahead. But at least be aware of the consequences.
My drive was especially geared towards the people who were so incredibly happy that they could look into the code and learn. You don't learn from that code, only if you have to solve a problem which is already solved for you in the framework and you can copy the code. People will be faced with that challenge sooner or later: the code is right in front of them, but they can't copy it... Must... resist.... Oh what the hell, who'll notice!
... someone will... sooner or later.
Also, if you have read carefully, I was saying: "If you do framework development, ...". If you write boring business apps... you're most likely living on top of the framework anyway. If you're a framework developer however, chances are you're REPLACING parts of the .NET framework with your own code (examples: o/r mappers, (de)serializers, controls etc.). And then you've to be careful. And not only with THIS code, but with ALL code you're looking at.
If you don't see that, if you don't understand that simple fact, you're doomed to fail sooner or later, you'll sooner or later fall into the trap where you'll copy/paste or include code from another person into your framework, just because you don't realize the consequences.
But hey, I am overreacting and a crybaby nutcase (not your words, but of some of the people replying to my post) of course. Sadly for you, I did do my homework in this area, I hope you did too.
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