Out of interest, what's to stop them publishing some 'version' of the modified code, but actually running a different version on their servers? Would that be easy to detect?
> Out of interest, what's to stop them publishing some 'version' of the modified code, but actually running a different version on their servers? Would that be easy to detect?
That depends on what you mean by "detect" -- there's an large body of Computer Science research dedicated to program attestation, i.e. enabling a user to verify that the program (or results of a program) derives directly from some source. But it's far from a solved problem in the general case.
Less formally, that's what the legal system is for: if the copyright holder suspects that the published source code is different from the source code that's being run by the service, then they're perfectly within their rights to take the service provider to court and attest, under the penalty of law, to their compliance.
woodruffw|4 years ago
That depends on what you mean by "detect" -- there's an large body of Computer Science research dedicated to program attestation, i.e. enabling a user to verify that the program (or results of a program) derives directly from some source. But it's far from a solved problem in the general case.
Less formally, that's what the legal system is for: if the copyright holder suspects that the published source code is different from the source code that's being run by the service, then they're perfectly within their rights to take the service provider to court and attest, under the penalty of law, to their compliance.
totony|4 years ago
The law
>Would that be easy to detect?
No