Re: GPLed software with no true source. Was: Bug#402650: ITP: mozilla-foxyproxy
On Tue, 30 Jan 2007, Joey Hess wrote:
> Don Armstrong wrote:
> > The bright line is actually pretty straight forward: Do you modify the
> > file with syntactic whitespace or the file without? Is it preferable
> > to modify the file without the keyword expansion or with?
>
> Preferable by whom?
The upstream maintainer. Whatever form(s) of the work the upstream
maintainer actually uses to modify the work is the prefered form for
modification.
> It's very dangerous to take a stance that any code that someone
> claims has a different preferred form for modification is
> nondistributable under the GPL. This allows anyone slander upstream
> and get their code considered unusable.
It doesn't matter what anyone thinks or claims is the prefered form
for modification, all that maters is what _is_. I'm (conveniently)
ignoring the issue of determining what is actually the prefered form
for modification for upstream, becuase it's something that is
necessarily heuristic, and not really the domain of -legal to
determine.
> It allows upstreams to lie about their development practives and
> damage us by forcing us to drop their entrenched code.
Unfortunatly, there's not much that can be done to protect us from
this latter case. If upstream wants to lie about which is the prefered
form for modification, our choice is either to stop distributing or
pony up when they sue us for violating their license and prove that
they're lying. [But again, this is about determining which form is the
prefered form for modification, not about what we do once we know what
that is.]
Don Armstrong
--
We were at a chinese resturant.
He was yelling at the waitress because there was a typo in his fortune
cookie.
-- hugh macleod http://www.gapingvoid.com/batch31.php
http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
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