Accused of copyright infridgment

[Antonello Lobianco]

On mercoledì 6 febbraio 2008, Ben Finney wrote:
> On 05-Feb-2008, no-reply wrote:
> > Ended that experience, I decided to develop from scratch a "clone" 
> > of such model. I didn't absolutelly copy any class, function, 
> > algorithm, line or whatsoever of such program, even because, as it 
> > has been developed for tens of years by different people in 
> > different contests, it was quite a "spaghetti code" and it wasn't 
> > very clear at all!
> 
> Did you have access to the code in order to develop your system?
Yes, I had

> If so, you will have a difficult time showing that your work is not a 
> derivative of the earlier one. It is for this reason that the "clean 
> room" <URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design> 
> implementation approach is often taken. Did you take such an approach, 
> and can you show evidence that this is the case?
I completelly "forgot" the old code (of witch I didn't got really much understanding on many parts) and started my own one from scrath.
My CVS can show how this has been started from nothing and little-little growing in dimensions and functionality, sometimes taking dead branches, and so on.

> > Rather, I started again with the very general concepts and I 
> > re-wrote from scratch the program, that ended being rather different 
> > from those original and I published it as GPL.
> 
> This statement would seem to be the basis of what you're claiming. The 
> issue would be whether you can show evidence that you implemented your 
> work without infringing copyright in the earlier work.
I ran "CodeMatch" from SAFE (http://www.safe-corp.biz/) and got no matching, exept for the initial #ifndef, #define, #include [...] sequence.
The results are here: http://regmas.org/codeMatch/

> Is copyright the only violation they are claiming? Ignore meaningless 
> "intellectual property" claims and look for what specific law they 
> claim you're violating.
> 
For now they only speak about "intellectual property rights", they never cite copyrights as well.

> > Thanks,
> >     Antonello Lobianco
> 
> Please fix your "From" field in the header of your messages, so that 
> it shows your name.
> 

done ;-)