[NTLUG:Discuss] RMS's Speach

[Christopher Browne]

On Mon, 05 Feb 2001 17:58:01 CST, the world broke into rejoicing as
"WILLIAM PEARSON" <WPEARSON at cyclix.com>  said:
> I've often wondered how much free source code is actually used in liscenced
> software. Especially since the only way to find out is to go through the
> source code or to reverse engineer the software, which is not only very
> difficult but becoming increasingly illegal (take the DMCA for instance, or
> in certain liscence agreements). Good luck getting a copy of the source
> code for any peice of M$ software if your not a corporation which would
> have to pay anyways, just to see if they used a slightly modified version
> of your cool new audio protocol in their latest version of Media Player. Or
> perhaps not even M$ at all, perhaps the Real Player people. The situations
> this has and can apply to are almost infinite. Unless they document your
> name somewhere, it's practically impossible to find out if they stole the
> code you created. After all, if it's illegal to reverse engineer the code
> how can you find out. If you do reverse engineer the code anyways and call
> them upon it because they didn't give you the code they'll sue you for
> breaking the liscence agreement or under any new law that restricts trying
> to figure out how something you bought works.
> 
> The Open Source movement may inadvertently be fueling certain parts of the
> commercial software industry. All that has to be done is to cut & past and
> viola, new program that you've got to pay for, with peices of free code in
> it. Nvidia a while back 'accidentally' cut and pasted some code from a free
> Linux video driver for one of their GeForce drivers. Nvidia confirmed that
> and fixed it, so I read on Slashdot anyways. So it has and will continue to
> happen.

All of this is theoretically possible, but not terribly likely.

What _is_ well-known is that Microsoft makes use of a bunch of
BSD-licensed code.  Run "strings" on the FTP client that comes with
Windows and you'll see some interesting messages.  It was very
entertaining to see SCCS-related messages in software that clearly
was not running on a platform where SCCS runs...

All of this is quite legal, and isn't even against the intent of the
softwares' authors...

It is entirely plausible that NVidia might have cut some code out of
XFree86; that would again be legal, and fit with the intent of the
members of the XFree86 Project.

In contrast, it is fairly _unlikely_ that Microsoft would include GPLed
code in Windows, as it only takes a disgruntled ex-employee to reveal
the facts, and, by far worst of all, give dozens of lawyers heart
attacks.  

I'm not kidding in the slightest about the latter... The _CRUCIAL_ thing
about Microsoft's "rise to power" comes in the fact that Gates grew up
in the family of a senior partner in a Seattle law firm specializing in
intellectual property law. 

There is no doubt in _my_ mind that the only reason Microsoft rose above
the other microcomputer software houses to such dramatic prominence
is the fact that Gates had a _clear_ understanding of the law, _GREAT_
family contacts, with the result that he was able to outwit the lawyers
of IBM in setting up licensing of a microcomputer OS.

No, I don't see any of the firms that are already heavily lawyer-run
wanting to get into the vastly risky enterprise of mislicensing
GPLed code...
--
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http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/lsf.html
"Terrrrrific." -- Ford Prefect