[nickelpro]

I don't understand what your point here is. The initial spec-writers learned from the original code. This is not illegal, we seem to be agreed on this point. grondo made the point that learning from code should not be prohibited.

What are you contesting?

[ghaff]

My point was that, assuming access to the code was legit, and the information being passed from the spec-writers to the developers wasn't covered by copyright (basically APIs and the like), it's a much better defense against a copyright claim that any code written by the developers isn't a copyright violation given they never saw the original code.