[fpc-pascal] Notice: Possible copyright infringements in FPC code base

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Tue, 15 Jan 2008, John Stoneham wrote:

> Sorry if I'm a little late to this discussion. I just wanted to let
> you know that I am an attorney and have handled copyright infringement
> cases in the US (most recently the SONY vs. Crain music piracy case).
> As a hobby programmer and FPC/Lazarus enthusiast, I would be more than
> happy to review, in my spare time and free of charge, any copyright
> infringement notices that the team receives. My current position
> forbids me from what's referred to as "the outside practice of law",
> which means that I can't actually represent the team or write letters
> on anyone's behalf or offer binding legal advice, but I *can* offer my
> informed opinion as a member of the mailing list and fpc community who
> happens to be an attorney familiar with copyright law in the US...
> 
> > The FPC team has been recently made aware that a number of routines in the
> > Classes unit are apparently based on code originally from Borland/CodeGear.
> 
> Did the team receive a notice of infringement from CodeGear, or was
> this just part of an internal review which was discovered by the team
> itself? If anyone received any communication from someone at CodeGear,
> please forward it to me so that I can understand their position a
> little better.

The initial accusations were published on a Blog of some former
Borland employee or afficionado. He contacted codegear, apparently,
and then a codegear official (Alan Bauer) contacted some of the
FPC team members by private email.

Prior to this email, but after the abovementioned discussion on the 
blog, we had decided on an audit ourselves, and this yielded a result 
of some 20-odd routines which are suspicious, and we decided to play
it safe and replace them.

All but 3 of these routines have meanwhile been recoded using a clean-room
approach. We are waiting for the last 3, after which a new release
will be made.
 
> > We are in a constructive dialog with people from CodeGear over this issue, and
> > will report back later on the repercussions as far as current and previous FPC
> > releases are concerned.
> 
> Who originated this discussion (did CodeGear or their attorneys
> contact you, or did you voluntarily inform them of the issue
> yourselves)? And is this discussion fairly informal so far, or has
> CodeGear indicated they have the intention of pursuing the issue
> further, perhaps legally?

As far as I can judge:
They count on us to play things fair, and let us handle it to our
own judgement for the moment, but said that if we undertook no 
action, they would take the necessary steps to protect their IP. 
We have given them the initial result of our review (i.e. the list
of suspicious routines), and I haven't heard from them since. 
As soon as we merge the clean-room implementation to the main 
branch, I will inform them that this has been done.

Michael.