Re: endorsements disclaimer as part of the warranty statement
On Sun, 2002-06-16 at 20:08, Jeremy Hankins wrote:
> It'd be a bit more complicated. Say you have some dvd reading code
> whose license says that so long as it's used in conjunction with the
> functions in evil.c (which is GPL'd) the resultant work can be
> distributed under the GPL. But if you remove and/or disable evil.c
> the original code reverts to a license under which you can't
> distribute it at all. Perhaps evil.c must have a particular checksum
> in order for the whole to be under the GPL. The licensor would argue
> that it's GPL compatible since, after all, the whole thing is under
> the GPL. It's only when you remove a certain portion of the code that
> another portion of the code suddenly reverts to a different
> (non-)license.
>
> I don't know if it'd *actually* be possible to make this work (what
> does it mean to disable evil.c? Though maybe evil.c replaces certain
> libc functions), and it would obviously be easy to reverse engineer
> the code. But nonetheless, I don't think it'd really be GPL
> compatible.
It isn't. This whole line of reasoning is reminiscint of criminals
trying to redefine the English language in an attempt to weasel out of
punishment. (Sorry if that's harsh; I mean no personal offense. I'm
just telling it as I see it.)
If evil.c is under the GPL, then it can be modified for any purpose
(including disabling its functionality). If the rest of the work then
requires that evil.c be of a particular checksum, or that it retain
certain characteristics, then they have violated the GPL by attempting
to prevent the modification of a GPLed component through an external
restriction. By GPL section 7, the license would nullify itself.
If evil.c is under a GPL-compatible license, then it is licensed under
the GPL as a part of the whole work, and the above logic holds.
If evil.c is under a non-GPL-compatible license, then it cannot be
linked with a GPLed program at all (subject to the normal exceptions),
and the question is therefore moot.
More pertinent would be a program with evil.c, licensed under a
proprietary license with an exception clause: while it exists as part of
a GPLed product, its terms would be relaxed to the GPL. This would be
strange, as the license would effectively be the GPL, and the copyright
holder could not prevent modification under such a license (which would,
I assume, be his/her purpose), but it could be done.
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