Re: PHPNuke license

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org>]

On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 04:31:17PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> Can you remind me of the advantages of NOT interpreting as "object form"
> as "any form other than the preferred form for modification"?

For the detailed description, see
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200303/msg00131.html

In a nutshell, I don't know of any reasonable person that would define
"object code" as the output of tr a-z A-Z on a text file.  By altering the
definition here, we create ambiguity.  This makes things weak in the court,
more litigation-prone, and harder to interpret -- as we see here.

If a court looks at this, and sees "object code", can we really know in
advance if they would use the normal definition or this "liberal" one?  I
suspect they would use the normal one, which is another problem.

> source form = preferred form for modification of the Work
> object form = any other form of the Work

If the license iteself defined object form that way, that'd be one thing. 
(It'd be confusing, but we could evaluate it only one way.)
But it doesn't define "object code" at all.