7 Aug
2009
7 Aug
'09
12:46 p.m.
On Friday 07 August 2009 09:51:05 you wrote:
On 7 Aug 2009, at 12:55, Raymond Martin wrote:
Which was so obviously GPL to begin with. And was obviously intended
to be completely under the GPL in any release.
On Friday 07 August 2009 06:51:08 Paul Davis
wrote:
This whole strand of the discussion came about because you had
threatened to release a decompilation of Bob's ***MODIFIED*** preview
release and I said: On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 6:30 PM, Ralf
Mardorf<ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net
For emphasis, I just want to paste that sentence
(and the following
one) again for Raymond, with attribution:
Eben Moglen, attorney for the FSF: "The claim that a GPL violation
could lead to the forcing open of proprietary code that has
wrongfully
included GPL'd components is simply wrong. There is no provision in
the Copyright Act to require distribution of infringing work on
altered terms. "
[...]
Perhaps you should read that paragraph again in the context of how
this whole discussion came about. Known free software, with a history of
being free, distributed under the GPL with the source code in the past,
was not being distributed with the source code at a point by the very same
people. So where would the altered terms be if the binary was decompiled
and source distributed for the application under consideration? "Until and unless you have Bob's preview
source files with GPL
headers all present and correct, you don't have a license for the mods
in that code."
Previous actions on his part show it was GPL already.
I wrote that sentence quite carefully but here it is again with some
emphasis on the pertinent words:
Until and unless you have Bob's ***PREVIEW*** source files with GPL
headers all present and correct, you don't have a license for ***THE
MODS*** in that code.
You would be very hard pressed to prove in a court that the code wasn't
intended to be under GPL in the first place. This is a very important point
you are jumping over. There was a definite intention for ALL the code to be
GPL, not just the old portion that was already out. There was NO intention for
the MODS to be proprietary. There is a trail of public evidence of this.
So this idea that you cannot decompile something INTENDED to be
GPL in the first place is moot. In law it is called circumstances. They
must be considered.
Eben Moglen, attorney for the FSF says:
"But most proprietary software companies want more power than copyright alone
gives them. These companies say their software is ``licensed'' to consumers,
but the license contains obligations that copyright law knows nothing about.
Software you're not allowed to understand, for example, often requires you to
agree not to decompile it. Copyright law doesn't prohibit decompilation, the
prohibition is just a contract term you agree to as a condition of getting
the software when you buy the product under shrink wrap in a store, or accept
a ``clickwrap license'' on line. Copyright is just leverage for taking even
more away from users."
Indicates right there that there is nothing prohibiting decompilation, unless
you agree in a contract not to do it. GPL is a license and there is no
agreement to not decompile GPL programs because there is no contractual
agreement not to do so. Thus, in the present case, decompilation does not
result in any violation at all. All the code was and is GPL, decompiling a
fully GPL program cannot result in any wrongdoing. Distributing it neither.
Raymond