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Skype Founders File Copyright Suit Against eBay
Saif writes to let us know that Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the founders of Skype, have filed a copyright suit against eBay for altering and sharing the peer-to-peer source code behind the calling service. The founders managed to maintain ownership of the source and licensed it to eBay in their 2005 deal and are now seeking an injunction and statutory damages which could total more than $75 million per day. "Mr. Zennstrom and Mr. Friis have developed a reputation for litigiousness in some legal circles. They filed three separate lawsuits against Pamela Colburn, an investment banker who represented them in the original sale of Skype, in the United States, the Netherlands and Britain. In May, a British judge dismissed the case and said the two men's reason for pursuing the matter in his country 'remains inexplicable.' The buyers of Skype have not publicly addressed the founders' lawsuit against eBay in Britain or their potential legal liability."
My question - how do they know the source doe was altered?
You dont need the source code to see changes. Assembly code is always available via debugger like ollydbg or others. Also, these guys are the ones who created kazaa/fasttrack and skype's algorithm, they probably have the technical intelligence to check it themself too or just hire someone to do it.
Its pretty hard, one could say almost impossible, to hide the algorithm changes since all the code is available as assembly.
This is just about eBay's stupidity on the point of purchase, because they didnt buy the whole thing.
You are probably right about the originators being able to tell. I should have quoted what is different about this animal.
When you said, "Assembly code is always available via debugger like ollydbg or others."
I thought to myself: yeah, for my programs, but skype is a different animal.
But if you already know this, then I can only hope someone else on /. found it interesting (I know I did when I first read it).