World Summit on the Information Society

[Marcus Brinkmann]

On Wed, Mar 19, 2003 at 11:28:29AM +0100, Stefano Maffulli wrote:
> Do you have or are there evidence that MS could file lawsuits against
> developers that read MS code?

MS can always file a lawsuit, as long as it can convince the court that it
has a case.  If it sues you of copyright violation because there is an
indication that you have read MS source code and then used portions of it in
your own code, that is certainly enough of a case to at least allow the
allegation to be tested in court (and once they have dragged you into a
lawsuit, it doesn't really matter if they are right or wrong, or if you can
proof that).

The best defense is to stay away from proprietary source code as far as
possible.

Thanks,
Marcus

-- 
`Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' GNU      http://www.gnu.org    marcus at gnu.org
Marcus Brinkmann              The Hurd http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/
Marcus.Brinkmann at ruhr-uni-bochum.de
http://www.marcus-brinkmann.de/