Fair enough point, though I don't feel this is a gray area. The chilling effect alone, being that I could be sued for simply looking at open source code is disturbing. Because that's what it boils down to. Most of our software today is a derivative work of something. I looked at rails code, so does that mean I can never write a web framework lest I be sued?
I'm going to stop you there and suggest that you go do some reading. Your understanding of the legal terminology is too woefully wrong for you to participate in a productive discussion of the issue. You are making sensationalist statements ("sued for simply looking at open source code") that are either extremely misguided or disingenuous. If you want to participate sincerely, you need to put forth more effort to understand what's at issue and to communicate using the correct meaning of technical terms.
Comments
Fair enough point, though I don't feel this is a gray area. The chilling effect alone, being that I could be sued for simply looking at open source code is disturbing. Because that's what it boils down to. Most of our software today is a derivative work of something. I looked at rails code, so does that mean I can never write a web framework lest I be sued?
No. At most it means you might have to adhere to the license Rails uses, if your work is sufficiently related to be a derived work.
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I'm going to stop you there and suggest that you go do some reading. Your understanding of the legal terminology is too woefully wrong for you to participate in a productive discussion of the issue. You are making sensationalist statements ("sued for simply looking at open source code") that are either extremely misguided or disingenuous. If you want to participate sincerely, you need to put forth more effort to understand what's at issue and to communicate using the correct meaning of technical terms.