Viktor Nilsson wrote:
On 2004-02-13, at 18.02, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
juergen.schmied@debitel.net wrote:
Use common sense.
IANAL The intelectual property law governing this case is the trade secret law. It says that the information is illegal to use if the recipient knows, or should have known, that it originated with illegally distributed trade secret.
Well, if you read through the code, to understand it, but you not even try to imitate or copy it. Just write brand new code, that does the same thing but in a slightly other way?
NO!!!!
What you are saying is applicable to copyright law. I.e. - if you reverse engineer the code (say, by disassembling it). If that's what you did on LEGALLY OBTAINED CODE, then you are probably ok. The reverse engineering itself needs to be legal where you do it, but that is still possible. For example, in Israel, as far as I have found out, it is still legal to rev-eng the code.
This original MS source code, on the other hand, is covered by trade secret laws, which are far stricter. Putting it bluntly - if you touch it knowing where it came from, or even unknowingly but ignoring common sense warnings that this is an illegally leaked version, you can probably not work on Wine again. The thing that is protected is not the expression (the code itself), as with copyright, but the ideas, which are deemed secret unless uncovered LAWFULLY.
Please, guys. Let's take this issue seriously.
Shachar