Anthony DeRobertis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Monday, Jun 23, 2003, at 02:44 US/Eastern, Thomas Bushnell, BSG > wrote: > > > > > The reason is quite clear: because otherwise one could very trivially > > escape the GPL's requirements entirely, by making some little > > modification directly to the binary for some program, and then > > claiming that the binary is, ipso facto, the preferred form. > > No, because a reasonable person (or, more accurately, a court applying > that standard) would not find that to be the preferred form of > modification. In the very least, he'd have to rise to the standard of > creating a derivative work.
Nope: the point is that by your act of modifying it, you ipso facto demonstrate that, for that particular modification at least, you preferred it. The whole point of the third-person "the preferred form" is to allow just this flexibility; it is a very well understood way of legal drafting, precisely because it has a certain very well understood meaning and use. Now, "very well understood" is exactly another of those distanced third-person terms, and for just the same reason. The license says there is a "preferred form", which might well be the union of several forms, and that this is what must be distributed. If one has not distributed a given form, then one will need to demonstrate to the court that it isn't preferred for modification, and the mere fact that you chose it as the way to make a particular modification blocks that. Thomas