Re: Encoding the name in the file contents (was Re: Towards a new LPPL draft)
At 04.25 +0200 2002-07-28, Jeff Licquia wrote:
>On Sat, 2002-07-27 at 19:10, Lars Hellström wrote:
[snip]
>> There is however a catch: the GPL won't let him. This functional change is
>> expressively forbidden by the above clause in the license. I'm not sure
>> whether he is forbidden to make the modification in the first case or just
>> forbidden to distribute this modification, but he wouldn't be meeting
>> condition 2c. It makes absolutely no difference that he and his friend both
>> want it this way---unless I approve of it separately, they're violating the
>> license and consequently lose their right even to use the program.
>
>This is not true.
>
>If you've modified the program in such a way as to respond to SMS
>queries directly, then you've modified the program such that it no
>longer "normally reads commands interactively when run". Specifically,
>the SMS messages are stateless, and there is no correlation between
>messages sent.
>
>If you've written a terminal emulator that works over SMS messages
>(yuck!), then sure, you're right.
It was indeed something like this that I had in mind---otherwise the
example wouldn't have worked. :-) It is quite possible to make up
variations (most of them equally bizarre and yucky), but the point was that
not even the GPL lets you modify the code in every way you might imagine.
Sure it is usually possible to avoid running straight into them, but the
restrictions are nontheless there. (A more powerful example could probably
have been built using the artistic license instead of the GPL.)
The implication of this that I thought was clear was that Thomas's line of
argumentation had become irrelevant since it was no longer based on
liberties required by the DFSG, but rather on ideals about absolute
liberty, which he furthermore tried to make more pleasing by the "we want
it and they want it too, so why shouldn't we be allowed to make it so?"
part of the argument.
Lars Hellström
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