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The Open-Source Detector

Posted by timothy on from the lie-detection dept.

McDutchie writes "With open-source related lawsuits on the rise, a market is developing for automated tools that detect the presence of open-source code within larger application development environments. Palamida Inc. stepped in with IP Amplifier 3.0, essentially a search tool and a database that consists of more than 38 million of the most commonly used open-source files. Something Google-inspired called CodeRank is claimed to match code against the database. Hmm... maybe someone should run it on this, or even this." Of course, some open source code is perfectly welcome in commercial software, even if that software's code is not itself open; it's no secret or surprise that Microsoft, for instance, has taken advantage in some products of BSD-licensed code.

3 of 340 comments (clear)

  1. Re:DLL encryption will render this ineffective by jdmetz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This tool is meant for commercial software companies to use, to ensure that they are not mistakenly using GPL code in their programs. It is not for open source developers to find misuses of their own code.

  2. The BSD license argument by marcovje · · Score: 5, Interesting


    >Of course, some open source code is perfectly >welcome in commercial software, even if that >software's code is not itself open; it's no secret >or surprise that Microsoft, for instance, has taken >advantage in some products of BSD-licensed code.

    This example (socket code) often pops up, and is often used in GPL advocacy.

    Note however that the TCP/IP work was done under a DARPA grant, paid for by the US government, so it is not only legal, but even moral right for Microsoft to use this code.

  3. Re:No Gurantee Against reimplentation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    > This tool can't possibly ensure that some binary wasn't made by someone who looked at the open source version, and just reimplemented the same ideas.

    What the fuck are you talking about ?

    GPL is a based on copyright. You can't copy/paste the code.

    Re-implementing the algos is fine, and have always been.

    It is 100% FUD to pretend that code become tainted because you looked a GPL source. Don't spread this. Microsoft would LOVE people to beleive that. It would end up like this in interviews:

    - Did you contributed to an open-source project ?
    - Well, I once fixed a bug in mozilla
    - Sorry, our lawyers said we can't hire you
    - Why ?
    - You would contamine our IP

    Repeat after me. GPL is COPYRIGHT. There is no IP involved. There have NEVER been.