Re: Zope license

[Brian Ristuccia <brianr@osiris.978.org>]

On Thu, Jan 21, 1999 at 03:14:08PM -0800, Joey Hess wrote:
>
> I can think of one example of this -- the GPL itself:
> 
>     c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when
>        run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use
>        in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement
>        including an appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is
>        no warranty (or else, saying that you provide a warranty) and that
>        users may redistribute the program under these conditions, and
>        telling the user how to view a copy of this License.  (Exception: if
>        the Program itself is interactive but does not normally print such an
>        announcement, your work based on the Program is not required to print
>        an announcement.)
> 
> This seems to say that if the FSF releases a program that prints out such an
> announcement, we cannot legally remove that announcement.
> 
> Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....
> 

It is permitted by the GDB license (GNU General Public License) to do
something like the following:

echo "quit" | gdb > foo
tail -2 foo
mail lots,of,people <foo

But a similar situation wouldn't be legal in the case of zope. The zope
license places license restrictions on how you can modify the program's
output independant of the program itself. The GPL only places restrictions
on how you can modify the program itself to produce different output.

-- 
Brian Ristuccia
brianr@osiris.978.org
bristucc@baynetworks.com
bristucc@cs.uml.edu