

To what degree can my open source software be inspired by this patent? - ilaksh

I see Charles Simonyi's PDFs and presentations on his Intentional Domain Workbench and decide he has the right approach and I want to make a tool like that.  So while attempting to start coding it I remember he was talking about 'lazy T2T transformations' (lazy tree to tree transformations), and I am trying to think of the best way to go about that, so I am googling 'tree transformations' and find lots of stuff, but not quite the right thing, so I google 'lazy tree to tree transformation' and on the first page is his patent<p>http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7607099.pdf (Method and System for Reversible Design Tree Transformations)<p>Now I know that no one can patent the _general concept_ of a lazy tree to tree transformation for a projecting editor with multiple domains, because there are all kinds of ways to accomplish that.  But I am trying to figure out, to what degree can my method/system be inspired by Simonyi's without violating the patent or something.  I am thinking whatever I end up coding will probably be much less complex than what he has in the patent but I don't know.  Anyway I think I should try to understand what he is doing first before coming at the problem blind.<p>This isn't necessarily part of the question, but I intend to use MIT or some other open source license for my software.
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wmf
Determining whether you're infringing a particular patent is so involved that
you would want to hire a lawyer. I know that's not a useful answer, but I can
barely interpret my own patents without a lawyer's help; understanding other
patents is usually a lost cause.

In general, don't read patents; intentional patent infringement has higher
damages than unintentional. This may not really apply to you if you have no
money, though.

