Radio Licensing. When I started looking at Radio, many sources told me that the best place to start was by looking at the internals of Radio itself. The scripts in the Object Database can be read pretty easily. In fact, my very first script was written largely by copying a bit of an HTML handler from the Object Database, and then modifying it so it did what I wanted it to do. This led me to a pretty interesting question:

If I write a Radio application, and in order to write it, I've had to copy a lot of Radio code in this manner, does my application belong to UserLand Inc.? What if I'm just using the code as a reference? Where does the line get drawn?

This came to me again when I was talking to someone in email about reimplementing the Radio Community Server in other languages. I was advised that it would be a good idea to download the RCS[1] (it's free as in free beer, but not free speech) and have a look at the source in order to work out what the new protocols for XmlStorageSystem are.

I'm pretty sure if I did this, and reimplemented RCS[2], my new implementation would be quite illegal, and UserLand could (if they chose) sue the pants off me. As such, I've been very careful not to even download RCS, and just look at wire dumps of the protocol instead.

[1] RCS is unfortunately an overloaded acronym. I see it and automatically think "Revision Control System".

[2] I'm having a bash at doing it in Java. If I don't lose interest or get distracted, I should have something you can upload stuff to by the end of the Easter weekend, but I'm quite likely to get distracted or lose interest, I've also got to clean my apartment and make further preparations for a month overseas.