On Wednesday 25 September 2002 05:41, Bhargav Bhatt wrote:

Hello Luggers! I will play the Devil's Advocate here.

snip

P.S: i dont think that the GPL can be used at M$ is too smart

at code obfuscation(i think it means obscuring source code) for people to be able to disassemble their OS and claim it to be a rip-off of linux.

Firstly no need for all the hassle of cloning linux use freebsd. It's license is unencumbered. Infact this is where they got their TCP/IP code from. A compiler is smart enough to de obfusicate code and will finally generate machine code very close to the original, which will be very difficult for M$ to defend. While small parts of similiar code may no doubt be attributed to coincidence, it would require some stretch of imagination to forward coincidence as an argument for an entire kernel. We must also presume that M$' developers worked in complete isolation and did not at any time consult any of the free developers - another tall order considering that the orginal code writers can barely understand what they have written in the first place.

Apart from the above hypothetical case, the real problem is about the development model used by closed and open software. The M$Developer will have to pick cut off date for the code they plan to copy. By the time they come up with something useable, the open version will have moved so far ahead that the old version will become pretty much useless. Also it is not the kernel which is the key, it is the applications which produce the $. So all applications on the windoze platform will have to be ported by the developers delaying the deployment by ages.

rgds jtdsouza@softhome.net