Re: java.util.logging

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi,

On Thu, 2002-02-28 at 20:05, Brian Gilstrap wrote:
> Sascha wrote:
>  >> (I really like some things in Lumberjack which I'd like to adapt,
>  >> of course giving due credit. But the question basically applies
>  >> to a lot of code, not only to Lumberjack).
> 
> Brian Jones wrote:
> 
>  > I really don't know, credit must be given always.  If it is more than
>  > 10 lines (total) of patch content then it probably falls under
>  > the copyright assignment desired bit, or maybe can be handled like
>  > gnu.java.math.MPN though I'm not sure when.  If you mean ideas that
>  > you reimplement then it probably doesn't matter.
> 
> Sascha and I are expecting to discuss our designs extensively. Since 
> both are open source, and since ideas that aren't patented can't be 
> owned (and I don't think any patentable ideas are lurking in either code 
> base :-), it seems to me that taking ideas from each other's code is 
> clearly okay.

The reason we normally warn people not to look at the source code (and
don't accept contributions of people that do) of a different
implementation  such as Suns source code are that 1) proprietary
software developers don't like people to look at their code without
agreeing to terms that normally forbid you to contribute to GNU and 2)
sometimes to be compatible with the API spec you will write some code
that looks remarkably like some other (compatible) implementation and
then it would be hard to prove that you didn't just copy the code you
just looked at (remember that to be serializable compatible you
sometimes even need to use the same variable names). 

See also <http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/doc/hacking.html#SEC2>

Cheers,

Mark