Question about legality of open-source software

[Kaido]

I've decided that I want to write my own webmail system. I really like Gmail, but it has a lot of features I don't need, I can't really personalize it for my site, and it's often slow or unavailable. Basically I want to create a slimmed-down version of Gmail, call it gnuMail, and release it as an open-source webmail system like SquirrelMail or NeoMail.

What are the legal implications of this? I don't want to get in trouble for creating a Gmail-knockoff.

 

[So]

Don't have access to G-mail source code? You're probably fine.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: So
Don't have access to G-mail source code? You're probably fine.

Cool. I know they're offering a public beta of their Gmail-for-your-website service, but Gmail has some fluff that I don't want/need and is missing a few features I do. Plus I'd rather have control over my email system anyway. I mean, it can't be that hard to do - a foundation of exim, clamav, and spamassissin is easy enough to come by, I just need a reader/storage manager/sender basically. I just don't want to get sued for created a clone of sorts