On Tue, Jul 27, 2004 at 03:43:03PM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote: > On Tue, Jul 27, 2004 at 08:24:29PM +0100, Andrew Suffield wrote: > > On Tue, Jul 27, 2004 at 02:13:10PM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote: > > > I hope that the FSF wouldn't want strengthen the idea that telling > > > people *how* to violate copyright should be illegal (eg. DeCSS, > > > "contributory infringement"). > > > > It's the act of writing the derivative software that was > > infringing. Not the same thing. > > I work on a game which can use MAD, GPL, to decode MP3s. The game itself is > MIT-licensed. I could also, if I wanted, make it support OpenSSL. I don't > think I would be in violation of the GPL (letter or spirit) as long as I > only distribute binaries that link against one or the other, and not both > at the same time. I might add a warning to the output of configure, eg. > "distribution of this binary is in violation of the GPL because you have > enabled these modules in combination:" if both were enabled, though. > > I believe doing all this would be in the spirit of the GPL, though > distributing an installer that built the binary for a user and saying > "use this to get around the GPL" certainly would not be. > > Do you think there's a violation in here somewhere? Where? Not really. But if it were a video library, rather than an mp3 decoding one, and it were the only one supported (but you could optionally build with no video output) then I'd say there was - despite the rather cheap attempt to duck the issue, it would be a clear derivative, and the first infringing action would be the creation of that derivative. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- |
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