On Thu, 2003-01-16 at 01:58, Norbert Cartagena wrote:
> Following this logic, would it then not be the case that if any
> programmer currelntly working for MS (or, for that matter, any
> proprietary software company) would at some point in the past have
> looked at open sourced (GPL'd) code, that the same programmer could not
> then ever be able to "safely" write code to contribute to any
> closed-source development effort because the FSF (or any other
> organization) would have very solid grounds for legal proceedings
> against them and any code they wrote for license infringement?
>
> Just wondering.
in theory yes. but it's one of the reasons MS likes to pluck new
programmers directly from class before they've had a chance to sully
their virgin eyes with anything outside of edumication skool, like
Linux.
It's also (IMNSHO, but still only my opinion) why MS is making such huge
attempts to get colleges to start implementing MS-based curriculum,
since a LOT of colleges are now using Linux as the basis for OS design
courses, instead of the more traditional MT.XINU or MINIX as they used
to in the past. MT.XINU and MINIX were really designed as educational
tools, rather than "real" operating systems, and came with complete
source, so they were very handy when everything else out there was
commercial, proprietary and covered under onerous copyrights. But with
a "real" operating system like Linux that has source available, lots of
courses are using that instead.
however, as other posts have indicated, the burden-of-proof would be on
the FSF to try to convince a court that MS may be using FSF-derived code
in their own products. given the amount of funding the FSF/EFF/et.al.
have available, relative to the amount of funding and built-in lawyers
that MS has available, it'll probably never happen.
however, it's a FACT that there is BSD-derived code in MS products.
it's my PERSONAL BELIEF that there is also GPL code in MS products that
nobody knows about because the source code is so heavily protected.
given the burden-of-proof issues, I don't see any reason why MS would
not be willing to "overlook" the occasional verbatim stealing of an
elegant hack from some GPL product if it suited their purposes and
helped get a product out the door, seeing as how nobody is ever going to
find out.
of course, I also believe that aliens, in league with the CIA, have
implanted a microchip in my brain, so....
--
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#!/usr/bin/perl -w
$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142;$t=255;@t=map
{$_%16or$t^=$c^=($m=(11,10,116,100,11,122,20,100)[$_/16%8])&110;
$t^=(72,@z=(64,72,$a^=12*($_%16-2?0:$m&17)),$b^=$_%64?12:0,@z)
[$_%8]}(16..271);if((@a=unx"C*",$_)[20]&48){$h=5;$_=unxb24,join
"",@b=map{xB8,unxb8,chr($_^$a[--$h+84])}@ARGV;s/...$/1$&/;$d=
unxV,xb25,$_;$e=256|(ord$b[4])<<9|ord$b[3];$d=$d>>8^($f=$t&($d
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8^$q<<6))<<9,$_=$t[$_]^(($h>>=8)+=$f+(~$g&$t))for@a[128..$#a]}
print+x"C*",@a}';s/x/pack+/g;eval
usage: qrpff 153 2 8 105 225 < /mnt/dvd/VOB_FILENAME \
| extract_mpeg2 | mpeg2dec -
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/
http://www.eff.org/ http://www.anti-dmca.org/
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