Re: Plagiary problem

[John Clarke <johnc@xxxxxxxxx>]

Pieter Cuijpers wrote:
> 
> The only thing I can think of is to go to court and start a legal case.
>

You're absolutely right that Prof. Chen should explore all his legal
remedies.  But he might have a hard time convincing a court that it
is a breach of _copyright_ which only protects the particular expression
of an idea.  The translation from assembler to C code that alledgedly
took
place might be sloppy enough that a smart lawyer could argue that
_copyright_ law does not apply.

Reverse engineering software is illegal in the USA for exactly this
reason.  Similarly reverse engineering software is legal in the EU only
for the purpose of allowing compatibility with other software i.e.
figuring out file formats, network protocols etc.  Maybe reverse
engineering is illegal in the relevant Asian countries.  Prof. Chen
should find out.

Also remember that there are a lot of countries involved which will
make a law suit even more difficult and expensive.

> As a last cent I do not see what plagiarism has to do with actually programming Go.
> I don't think it's a problem that plagiarism is discussed here. But let's not
> forget about the real topics this list is about.
> 

If people can get away with theft then everybody loses - look how much
time we've spent discussing this topic.  And I bet everyone will be
a lot more wary about sharing code etc.  It's bad for Prof. Chen now,
but we all lose in the long run.

Regards
John Clarke