[Lazarus] Google vs Oracle case - does it affect LCL ?

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

On 15/04/18 10:30, Graeme Geldenhuys via Lazarus wrote:
> On 2018-04-15 09:42, Adrian Veith via Lazarus wrote:> What do you think ?
> It will never concern or worry use. Why...? If Embarcadero can't evenbother, or simply can't stop Code Typhon in shipping a leaked FMXframework, why would Google, Oracle or Microsoft bother with somethingas small as FPC or Lazarus. They just wont - it will be a colossal wasteof time for them with no financial reward.


I'd suggest that that is not a safe assumption: "We didn't think anybody 
would notice" has never been a valid defence, and copyright is governed 
by international treaties.


Leaving aside the question of jurisdiction and differing tolerance of 
reverse engineering etc. in different countries, I'd suggest that the 
most relevant thing is that at one point the company that owned the 
rights to Delphi made commercial use of the FPC compiler. They cannot 
claim to be ignorant of the function and structure names in the FCL, and 
the fact that they (presumably) did not challenge the FPC developers at 
that point would probably make it more difficult to do so now.


-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]