I just saw on Cnet the following headline “Lawsuit accuses Google of code theft – Start-up claims an engineer stole software code to create the popular online social networking service Orkut.com.” If true, I just don’t get why those Google guys would have to rip off someone’s social networking software. It’s not rocket science or OS architecture we’re talking about here – anyone can put together the basic mechanism using an off-the-shelf open source content management system, plus some python programming in about a month – 2 weeks if you full-time it. My son could do it, and he’s 14!
Of course, I never understood the open source guys ripping off old OS work either, when the chip architectures had changed, and you could do something a lot faster, better, cheaper. But that’s real work – not kiddie script stuff like we’re hearing about here.
I guess some folks would rather spend years stealing than a few hours thinking. Or do you think the Orkut engineer was just desperate for a date and couldn’t wait?