Quote:
Originally Posted by DuckieTigger
How do you go about protecting binary code? How far do you want to go? Nice analogy about cooking, but that cannot really apply to software the same. Example a simple bread. One bread is indistinguishable from the next one. Now take Photoshop. Make a copy of it so perfect that it is impossible to tell the difference other than the opening splash screen. Should you be able to do that? Keep all the features, but change the GUI around so it doesn't look like Photoshop any more. Should you be able to do that? Where do you want to draw the line? Maybe at rounded corners.
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Oh, various types of bread and brands of bread tend to be very different from each other.
What about elevators? the UI on elevators tends to be almost identical from brand to brand. Should they be allowed to do that? How about the UI for a car? They are also almost identical. Indeed, driving would be much harder if they were not. Why should software be different? As far as making a perfect copy of Photoshop, why not? As long as you do a clean room creation, why shouldn't you be able to do so? Is that really all that different than screw drivers, power drills and any number of physical devices which tend to have very little difference from manufacturer to manufacturer?
Software pleads for special protection, yet in reality, I'm willing to wager that Photoshop has plenty of code in it that was brought by programmers from other jobs, or from books and examples of how to do a specific task on the web. One of the prime skills for a productive coder is how to use google.