In article <[email protected]>, Alan Mackenzie <[email protected]> wrote:
[snip] > Eh? What's that got to do with anything? It just means you're free to > crack a program restricted by "technological measures" to discern its > external data formats and interfaces, so that you can build a compatible > program. That's irrelevant for GPL'd programs, since the source code is > available, and (by definition) GPL3 programs don't contain such > "technological measures". I suppose you might crack a GPL program as a > technical exercise, training for cracking close source programs, but so > what? Hmm.... There's an interesting question here. Let's say you want to write a proprietary program that implements the same file format as a GPL'd program. Can you really just read the source code to figure out that file format, and then go write your app? Or do you have to go through a clean-room process, where you have one guy look at the GPL'd code and write up a spec, and another guy write the code to implement it? [snip] -- "The game of professional investment is intolerably boring and over-exacting to anyone who is entirely exempt from the gambling instinct; whilst he who has it must pay to this propensity the appropriate toll." -- John Maynard Keynes _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
