* Glenn Maynard: >> Regardless of any >> other provision of this License, no permission is given to distribute >> covered works that illegally invade users' privacy > > This is a butterknife being boxed with a "you may not sharpen this > knife and stab people with it" notice: that's already illegal, and > it just serves to complicate the license.
And in the cases I'm familiar with, the offending software is never distributed widely, so this clause doesn't come into effect at all. >> No covered work constitutes part of an effective technological protection >> measure: that is to say, distribution of a covered work as part of a system >> to generate or access certain data constitutes general permission at least >> for development, distribution and use, under this License, of other >> software capable of accessing the same data. > > It sounds like this means "if your GPL application accesses data, > you grant a GPL license to every other application that accesses the > data". It doesn't, but I can only barely understand the actual > meaning after reading the rationale. Hopefully this can be > clarified. I haven't read the rationale, but the intent seems to be quite clear: circumventing some DRM which is implemented by software under this license an never be illegal because the software is not an effective technological protection measure -- which would be protected by the DMCA and similar laws in other countries. As far as anti-DRM clauses go, this one is pretty clever. I'm not sure if this will work out in practice, but unlike previous attempts, it doesn't look harmful in any way. >> a) The modified work must carry prominent notices stating that you >> changed the work and the date of any change. > > This is so widely violated that it's clear that it's not working; it'd > be nice if they would acknowledge this and remove it. Yes, this is indeed a problematic thing in version 2 that can and should be fixed. > Failing that, at least make it clear that you don't have to identify > yourself here, or that an alias is acceptable. Hmm, I'm not sure if this is the right direction: I'm strongly in favor of a clear copyright status of a work, and a way to identify all copyright owners seems to be a necessary condition. > I may want to use a special-purpose download server for object files, > for automatic downloading and installation of binaries; that server > may have carefully limited facilities, as fewer unused features in a > server means less to break, which means less downtime. In that case, > I'm likely to want to put the source on a more traditional http server. > This clause seems to unintentionally prohibit this class of > distribution. I think it's intentional and necessary to keep things simple. There's no other straightforward way to require equal access to object and source code. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
