[Scoundreller]

We're talking about code. Which is more like a recipe than a novel.

If Coca Cola writes down its proprietary recipe on their entrance "by mistake", I can definitely make use of it. Maybe I can't photocopy it for sale, but I can definitely re-use their previously-secret techniques.

I can even say I got it from them through their own error and have the exact same outputs for the exact same inputs.

Trade secrets aren't your secret anymore once you publish them.

All we know in this case is that copyright law was used as a tool to remove it.

[gowld]

> Which is more like a recipe than a novel.

Courts strongly disagree with you.

[Scoundreller]

Do they?

If you reverse engineer a system and write a spec using clean-room technique, it's going to be massively easier for the team to do it if they have lawful access to the no-longer proprietary source code.

And wouldn't that be the method to re-create your own copyrightable implementation of GPL code too?