On Thu, Dec 14, 2006 at 11:41:34AM +0200, Shachar Shemesh wrote: > While this may or may not be the case, I do believe that a lot of people > WILL, in fact, be angry if this route is abused.
The problem is that anger is nothing in a court of law, or in the normal business world. Two examples: 1. If you have a well published interface that will give you all sorts of goodness where a string is included in the code at a certain point, such as "GPL", then it is perfectly legal to include that string at that point and get the goodness. It's not a violation of the DMCA as it's not reverse engineering, it's not a violation of the license because the interface is well published. If for example, the docs say you must have "GPL Licensed Source Code" in the program, but it only checks for "GPL", since the source code is open source, you can claim that the documentation is not in sync with the code and "GPL" is all that is required. That would make a lot of people angry, but it would very likely stand up in court (I am not a lawyer). BTW, is "GPL" a trademark? Where? You could also have a programmer(s) named George Paul Linus, use his/their initials, or I could abbreviate "Geoff's Private License" as "GPL". If it is a registered trademark the holders of it are required to defend it, if they ignore it, the trademark is void. If it is not registered in Israel, then I can use it, other people may or may not. STFW "Sony Australia Walkman trademark". 2. As I have said many times, there is a popular program which the owners released as GPL, solicited and added source code for new features and bug fixes provided as GPL'ed code and then sold closed source licenses to large companies. There was a big stink, several of the developers quit the project, but no one has sued to stop them, and the program is still being used by many people, the company is still in business, and people are contributing code under the GPL, knowing it may not stay that way. In short, no one really cares. When it comes to convenience and money people look the other way. Geoff. -- Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel [EMAIL PROTECTED] N3OWJ/4X1GM IL Voice: (07)-7424-1667 Fax ONLY: 972-2-648-1443 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838 Visit my 'blog at http://geoffstechno.livejournal.com/ ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
