On Mon, Apr 09, 2007 at 06:25:17PM -0700, ChronosWS wrote: > I was unclear when I made my statement. By 'clean' I meant the code was > being rewritten from scratch. I am using the Netrek XP 2006 v1.2 codebase > as a reference for the protocol and behaviors, but not using the code. The > new code will be released under BSD with proper attribution. Sorry for the > confusion. Appropriate files will be checked into source control shortly. If you want true clean-room with legal right to set the license, you should use a middle man. One person to document the protocol, and a second person to implement based *only* upon the documentation. Otherwise, failure to provide attribution and respect the original license is either rude or not legal. At the company I work, they've chosen to specifically segregate the employees who work on the Linux kernel, from the people who work on proprietary drivers or software. This sort of arm's length requirement is precisely to ensure legality of the situation. You can't promise anybody that having looked at a specific section of code, you will write completely unique code. And why should you have to? Some software patterns *do* apply to certain problem domains. But the only way you can show this to be a coincidence, is with a visible distance between the original code and the replacement code. Otherwise, it is a derivative. Derived works cannot change the license of the code that was used or changed from the original. It may seem pedantic to you - but these silly little rules are the only thing that makes licenses or copyrights valuable in the first place. No offense intended, and I don't like restrictive licensing. I do, however, believe that they are important to uphold. Cheers, mark -- mark at mielke.cc / markm at ncf.ca / markm at nortel.com __________________________ . . _ ._ . . .__ . . ._. .__ . . . .__ | Neighbourhood Coder |\/| |_| |_| |/ |_ |\/| | |_ | |/ |_ | | | | | | \ | \ |__ . | | .|. |__ |__ | \ |__ | Ottawa, Ontario, Canada One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them... http://mark.mielke.cc/