View Single Post
05/13/14, 07:04 AM   #16
CatoTheElder
Join Date: May 2014
Posts: 44
Another highly controversial topic? Great...

The matter of intellectual property rights protection is a multi billion dollar/yr industry. It is a legal grey area world wide. Speaking empirically, there is no property at all. You've simply instructed a compiler to compile easy to read and write "code", to lower level code, which gets passed to the OS kernel, which does the same and passes it to the drivers, which does the same, and passes it to the firmware, which then orders the pulsing of electricity through a circuit.

The legal rulings so far, are pretty much a joke. For example, Apple was recently awarded exclusive rights to use boxes with rounded corners on mobile devices. Although, I remember quite clearly devices that had boxes with rounded corners before Apple even existed. Hell, I personally coded that before Apple. The concept of rounding sharp edges, is probably what... quarter of a million years old, I'd guess?

Practically, anything you release to public can be copied. Unencrypted text is ridiculously simple to copy. The more encryption, the harder it is, but one can always go down a layer further than you did, and copy it from there (hence why every encryption method is broken in less than 6 months).

Practically speaking, there is nothing you can do to stop others from taking your code, and you really can't prove they did anyway.... since your code is directly based on the API, and you didn't write that. As already mentioned, the most you could do is attempt to have their uploads removed from each place you find them at.

It is always nice to contact the original author first. Working together usually ends up with a better result anyway. It goes the other way too though, you can contact the other person and offer to work with them.

In the end, best to think of it like this:
"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery."

... and if you're that upset, there's always a way around everything, if you're willing to put the resources in to it.

Cheers!
  Reply With Quote