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931 points sohzm | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.353s | source
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tombert ◴[] No.44460923[source]
Things like this are why I have become disillusioned with Open Source, and why latest projects have been closed source. The GPL is a good enough idea but it is basically impossible for anyone to realistically enforce. If a corporation is selling an optimized binary, then it can be almost impossible to prove that there was any violation of the GPL without viewing the source.
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bawolff ◴[] No.44462047[source]
> If a corporation is selling an optimized binary, then it can be almost impossible to prove that there was any violation of the GPL without viewing the source.

I think you can notice that output looks similar, error messages are similar, etc. If the program is non-trivial its usually pretty obvious if its a copy or a reimplementation.

If it sounds plausible, presumably you could sue and read the source in discovery (ianal, not sure precisely how that works)

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1. crystaln ◴[] No.44462205[source]
Being obvious to a developer poking at a product is quite disparate from successfully bringing a lawsuit involving source discovery.