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Re: PHPNuke license



Just to be clear: I'm not sure exactly how or where PHPNuke outputs the
given text.  If it's part of output templates, then it doesn't seem to
be a problem.  My problem is if PHPNuke is claiming that I have to maintain
the GPL blurb even if I redesign its output (eg. rewrite templates); that
PHPNuke must always output a GPL blurb.

That would be akin (in my mind) to Apache requiring the same thing [1], or
perhaps even to Gimp requiring that GPL blurb be stamped on the output of
its images.  The person bound by the copyright--the site administrator or
the artist--is the person that needs to be able to see the copyright
information, not the third party receiving the output--the user on the
Internet or the person viewing the art.

I have no idea if there's an argument that a user on the Internet is in
some way bound by the copyright of the programs used to generate the
output of the links he's clicking (eg. Apache or PHPNuke).  (I can't
think of one, but IANAL.)

(I'm certainly not arguing against giving credit, but I don't believe
credit is the purpose of the GPL blurb and no-warranty statement.)

On Mon, Mar 03, 2003 at 06:06:58PM -0500, David Turner wrote:
> A program in the middle of a pipeline never directly accepts input from
> the user, nor does it output direcly to the user.  
> 
> How does this sound for an interpretation of interactive in shell
> scripts: "A program is running interactively if stdin and stdout are
> ttys."  This should prevent most of the spam effect, right?

I'm not arguing that a program in the middle of a user pipeline should
be considered interactive; I just think that Branden's argument (which I
can see as reasonable but am not quite decided on) is that it's in the
same class as a program generating HTML output through a pipeline
(eg. Apache)--they're equally interactive (or uninteractive).  (Branden,
am I still remotely close to your argument, or have I wandered?)

(Incidentally, I've always thought of programs like "gdb" as being
interactive, and programs like "df" and "cat"--including ones that
happen to read data from stdin--as being uninteractive.  I don't mind
debating these interpretations of "interactive" here, but it's tangental
to the PHPNuke discussion.)

[1] if it were GPL, which it isn't.

-- 
Glenn Maynard



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