New Method To Detect and Prove GPL Violations

qwerty writes "A paper to be presented at the upcoming academic conference Automated Software Engineering describes a new method to detect code theft and could be used to detect GPL violations in particular. While the co-called birthmarking method is demonstrated for Java, it is general enough to work for other languages as well. The API Benchmark observes the interaction between an application and (dynamic) libraries that are part of the runtime system. This captures the observable behavior of the program and cannot be easily foiled using code obfuscation techniques, as shown in the paper (PDF). Once such a birthmark is captured, it can be searched for in other programs. By capturing the birthmarks from popular open-source frameworks, GPL-violating applications could be identified."

Comments

Just great

[Master of Transhuman]

Instead of coding open source projects, now we're coding projects to detect license violations.

Next, the Open Source Business Software Alliance and raids by the Secret Service...

When is the last time we read anything about open source that wasn't about licensing?

When did it stop being about the code and the value?