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stealing from GPL?

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iustitia:
Hello Fellow hackers and/or M$ haters:

I just realized something.  How does the FSF enforce the GPL.  I was wondering what would happen if a  propietery company stole a bits and peices program that was licensed under the GPL.  Since most of those types of companies only realease binaries of their software, it would be certian that no one would notice, especially becuse most End User licenses forbid reversing.  This is probally been brought up here before, but I just realized it and found it an especially haunting prospect.  There could be thousands of software companies that are stealing large portions of code from hackers who believed they were coding in defiance of Corperate America, when in fact they were helping it.  The prospect scares the crap outa me.

voidmain:
Good question. If a proprietary company such as M$ were to use GPL believe me, sooner or later someone from the inside would squeal. Sort of like software piracy. Companies usually do not pirate software because sooner or later a disgruntled employee would rat them out. There is an email address that violations can be reported. For more information see:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/enforcing-gpl.html

psyjax:
YEs good point. As Void has pointed out a few times, M$ has incorporated many portions of free BSD into the NT kernel.

Tho they wont admit to it. Bastards!

EDIT:

Err.. hehe.. I didn't notice I posted right after the man himself  :D

Anyway, I think he suggested... hmm.. hey Void, what was your theory behind M$ swiping GPL code? If you remember that is  

[ June 10, 2002: Message edited by: psyjax ]

voidmain:
Well, BSD code is not GPL code. M$ is actually free to incorporate any BSD code into their OS that they wish (and I wish they would incorporate more to be honest, would be a hell of a lot better product). The BSD license allows you to "steal" code and do whatever you want with it, including modifying/selling and not releasing the source code. Under the GPL you are allowed to modify and sell but you must also release your source code and allow the same freedoms to your customer. I have read that M$ has used the BSD TCP/IP stack, and we all know they stole Kerberos and hacked it up until it didn't work with anything but other M$ products. And of course IE was originally created from Mozaic, also open source (but not GPL).

ahri:
I keep hearing windows uses the BSD TCP/IP stack. Is there anyway to verify that or is it rumor status?

I allso heard that the NT kernel is OS/2.

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