Quote Originally Posted by mmarien View Post
A couple of opposing views. Got me thinking. I also did get some local feed back. One example given was a map. It's difficult to create a new map without using other maps. A map is copyrighted but for the most part the information used to create the map is obtained from other maps. Another example is that a book is copyrighted but you can write the same story without infringing on the book's copyright as long as the second story is original work. UNIX sued Linux as the two operating system do the same thing and the apps are interchangeable. Linux was written to do the same thing as UNIX. It was discovered that very little of the code for the two programs were similar. UNIX lost their case as it was proved that nothing was copied.

With that in mind, I think if someone draws some airplane plans and the airplane looks very similar to another there is no copyright infringement. The copyright would only exist if the original plans were copied verbatim.
It kind of sounds like you were going to come to that conclusion no matter what we replied and you just wanted validation? I would spend the $100 on an attorneys opinion before making them open source. It might save you $10,000 down the line if the copyright holder comes after you. Who was the original designer? Some are more laid back than others, while some are very legal happy.