On Fri, 1 Oct 1999, Michael Jinks wrote:

> Agreed.
> 
> In the comments in response to the article on ZDNet, Bruce Perens said
> something like, "This won't help Sun at all, the OpenSource OS's (I
> think he said Linux, whatever) will just copy Solaris without copying
> the source."
> 
> I've always wondered about that.
> 
> If it's that easy, why doesn't [insert name of your least-favorite
> closed-source *X here] just pick and choose features from the
> open-source OS's, rename all the variables or something slightly less
> superficial, and carry on?

wouldn't suprise me if they do some except they may suffer from NIH.  If
you're interested, somewhere on the gnu web pages they talk about ways to
rewrite code if you've actually seen copyrighted code.  Ways that really
don't constitute copying it.

-Dan