True, though I don't have to agree to a license agreement to purchase
and read a book. I was thinking in this context the license agreement
which specifically forbids reverse-engineering would give you more
options than strictly dealing with copyright law. But IANAL.
I was responding more specifically to the statement (quote): " I don't
know what your legal options would be if someone took code that you
went and showed them".
If you show someone your source code, you don't relinquish copyright
on that code. They can't legally go and copy the code into their
products just because you showed it to someone, anymore than I can copy
a chapter of a Tom Clancy novel into a book I write.
Now if you haven't shown them your code, well, your options may be
different. There is copyright law, contract law, and (potentially)
patent law to contend with. And, of course, these laws will differ in
different places, making discussing any of them here moot.
(IANAL either, but I own enough copyrighted material and patents to at
least have some experience in these areas).
For source code, the copyright issue is important in the Open Source
world, for you are showing the source to the people you distribute your
programs/libraries to. Yet copyright is still retained, and usage of
the source code is controlled via licensing.
Brad BARCLAY
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