Re: Free/OpenSource software?
On Fri, May 01, 1998 at 11:32:59AM +1000, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 30, 1998 at 06:50:14PM -0400, Thomas Lakofski wrote:
> > If you suspected this, there are ways in which it can be shown that your
> > code has been stolen, as was done when Microsoft stole Stacker technology
> > and called it Doublespace in DOS 6.2. The risk of being caught is usually
> > enough deterrent, as if you were caught, the license terms of GPL'd
> > software would require the release of sources for all derivative works.
>
> But weren't Microsoft found to have breached Stac's patent, rather than
> stolen actual code? I think actual code would be harder to prove
> than infringement of a patent.
There was an article in _EE Times_ about the Cadence vs. Avant lawsuit.
They were using similarities in the source code to try to prove code had
been copied. I think the variable names were all different, but they
were looking for similar patterns of stange indenting and punctuation.
I think the guy doing the code analysis does it full time. Of course,
you would probably need to get a court order to get access to the
disputed source code for comparison.
--
Lee Bradshaw lee@sectionIV.com (preferred)
Alantro Communications lee@alantro.com
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