Re: PHPNuke license

[bsniffen@mitre.org (Brian T. Sniffen)]

John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> writes:

> On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 10:45:43AM -0500, Brian T. Sniffen wrote:
>> > I find it hard to believe that anything "produced by mechanical
>> > transformation" from a source is object form.  Object form is machine code. 
>> >
>> > I can not magically transform a text file into object form by running
>> > "tr a-z A-Z" on it.
>> 
>> Sure you can.  It's now full of shouting, and no longer in the
>> preferred form for modification.  No license can reasonably
>> distinguish between tr and gnupg -- distinguishing indent is hard
>> enough.
>
> Nobody, including the FSF, defines object form as "not the preferred form
> for modification."  Just because the source code IS that format does not
> bean that everything that is not source code is object code.

But the GNU GPL gives you a license to distribute source code and
object or executable form, and nothing else... so if your
obfuscated/munged/semicompiled form is neither source nor object, and
you only have the right to distribute it under the GPL, my
understanding is that you may not distribute it at all.

The GPL wisely avoids a strict definition of object form, but I would
think that the classic definition -- the product of a mechanical
transformation from source or from other objects, and no longer source
code -- would work.

-Brian

-- 
Brian T. Sniffen
G026 / Secure Technology Solutions
bsniffen@mitre.org