All Your BASH Are Belong To Us

... it seems rather clear 8-P why the TeamHPC guys left Atipa/Microtech in the first place.

Why would you think this story is a joke?

What is it about geeks that makes them think they don't have to operate in the same business environment as others?

It's not nice to steal others' work -- stuff they've paid to develop and built a business on.

You want to start your own business? Do the work.

@dino: Not that I'm disagreeing with your point, but I do wonder: what are the legal ramifications if any of the files in question has no copyright notice? Say, ten shell scripts, 9 contain copyright notices, but the 10th starts with the #!/bin/sh and then script code.

@gus3: Current copyright law as I understand it autovivifies a copyright as soon as a creative work is fixed in publishable form (web posting, text file, source), whether there's an explicit notice or not.

@gus3 -

I think this is a trade secrets action, which is not the same thing as copyright.

Trade secrets are about wrongfully appropriating -- stealing -- company secrets.

The material doesn't have to be copyrighted or copyrightable.

> I think this is a trade secrets action, which is not the same thing as copyright.

As I understand it, the bash scripts they're arguing over were supplied in readable text for anyone to look at. Unless their contract with their customers specifies some limitation on their use of that source code, that would sort of shoot the idea of it being a secret in the head, wouldn't it?

You know as well as I do that a trade secret is only protected as long as it's actually a secret, Dino. Release of that secret to the public voids the protection. So it should all come down to the agreements they have with their customers.

@jdixon -

If customers were under contracts, they were not free to disclose the secrets.

As to loss of secret status, there are releases and there are releases. A limited release does not necessarily mean the loss of trade secret status. Now -- there is a problem if those who have received the secrets are under no obligation to keep them, but...

all stuff for the court to hash out.

> If customers were under contracts, they were not free to disclose the secrets.

Unless the contracts fail to stipulate that, of course.

> Now -- there is a problem if those who have received the secrets are under no obligation to keep them, but...

Exactly. And we have no idea if they were or not. So...

> ...all stuff for the court to hash out.

Yep. And that's the type of thing courts are actually pretty good at.

>Yep. And that's the type of thing courts are actually pretty good at.

It is, in fact.

I don't think anybody is calling for interpretation here of much except contracts and duties. Everyday stuff.

Since this a court of first instance, there's no real danger in setting a precedent. Most "common pleas" courts do not publish opinions, or if they do, only on a local level. So this might turn out as a badly decided case for these guys, but it's not even on the radar for brewing trouble for the everyday bash script author.