Re: Defining 'preferred form for making modifications'

[tb@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG)]

Anthony DeRobertis <asd@suespammers.org> writes:

> On Monday, Jun 23, 2003, at 02:44 US/Eastern, Thomas Bushnell, BSG
> wrote:
> 
> >
> > The reason is quite clear: because otherwise one could very trivially
> > escape the GPL's requirements entirely, by making some little
> > modification directly to the binary for some program, and then
> > claiming that the binary is, ipso facto, the preferred form.
> 
> No, because a reasonable person (or, more accurately, a court applying
> that standard) would not find that to be the preferred form of
> modification. In the very least, he'd have to rise to the standard of
> creating a derivative work.

Nope: the point is that by your act of modifying it, you ipso facto
demonstrate that, for that particular modification at least, you
preferred it.

The whole point of the third-person "the preferred form" is to allow
just this flexibility; it is a very well understood way of legal
drafting, precisely because it has a certain very well understood
meaning and use.

Now, "very well understood" is exactly another of those distanced
third-person terms, and for just the same reason.

The license says there is a "preferred form", which might well be the
union of several forms, and that this is what must be distributed.  If
one has not distributed a given form, then one will need to
demonstrate to the court that it isn't preferred for modification, and
the mere fact that you chose it as the way to make a particular
modification blocks that.

Thomas