The Opposite Is True [LWN.net]

The Opposite Is True

Posted May 22, 2003 18:57 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (subscriber, #755)
In reply to: The Opposite Is True by mbcook
Parent article: ...and if SCO is right...?

And, in practical fact, this has happened.

There is at least one case I remember where a hardware manufacturer
employee said (albeit off the record) that a driver wasn't being open
sourced because it either a) had stolen code in it, or b) had code in it
that violated someone else's patent. Video card, I think.

And there have certainly been a couple of cases where it's been
questionable as to whether a closed-source vendor had simply lifted GPL'd
code, and couldn't be caught at it since their code was closed.

So, certainly, they could have already been doing it to us...

But how do you prove it?

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The Opposite Is True

Posted May 22, 2003 20:54 UTC (Thu) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link]

GPL clause 2c, while under strong contention as to its "freeness", is how lifted code is often found when proprietary software incorporates GPLd software. Running strings on the binary ends up pulling out the original author's copyright notices.

I imagine lots of proprietary software has similar strings (RCS id strings, for example).