> Let us say that Microsoft ships a windows version (service pack) that does
> page writes faster. For starters, this would be hard to detect. Second,
> there is no probable cause - Microsoft can simply say they made a better
> mousetrap, to borrow a phrase.
Of course, there may be cases where it may be tremendously hard to detect.
But the potential cost, in case some unexpected bug pops up (bugs are often
make internal details dangerously visible to the whole world) or in case
some employee decides to not keep quiet, is a pretty good deterrent for
those compagnies that have a clue.
If needed, it's much cheaper for big compagnies like MS to get a few coders
to write new code that mimcks the (desirable) behavior of some GPL'd code.
After all, GPL does not really protect the algorithm/idea, only the
code itself.
Stefan
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