Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs

2008-12-07 Thread Florian Weimer
* Arnoud Engelfriet: Florian Weimer wrote: | You may make, run and propagate covered works that you do not | convey, without conditions so long as your license otherwise remains | in force. You may convey covered works to others for the sole purpose | of having them make modifications

Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs

2008-01-28 Thread Arnoud Engelfriet
Florian Weimer wrote: | You may make, run and propagate covered works that you do not | convey, without conditions so long as your license otherwise remains | in force. You may convey covered works to others for the sole purpose | of having them make modifications exclusively for you, or

Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs

2008-01-28 Thread Florian Weimer
FW GPLv3 makes it pretty clear that Dreamhost can take your rights away So all that effort of writing Free Software and the result is there is Johnny, sitting at the shell prompt, unable to see the source code to anything behind it if they decide to close it. Yes, I find the

Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs

2008-01-28 Thread Joe Smith
Arnoud Engelfriet [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Florian Weimer wrote: | You may make, run and propagate covered works that you do not | convey, without conditions so long as your license otherwise remains | in force. You may convey covered works to others for

Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs

2008-01-28 Thread MJ Ray
\John Halton\ [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Jan 25, 2008 9:07 AM, Arnoud Engelfriet [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: My first question would be whether those files would contain sufficient creative expression to qualify for copyright protection. If they don't (and I am not sure something like

Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs

2008-01-28 Thread Florian Weimer
FW GPLv3 makes it pretty clear that Dreamhost can take your rights away So all that effort of writing Free Software and the result is there is Johnny, sitting at the shell prompt, unable to see the source code to anything behind it if they decide to close it. Yes, I find the

Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs

2008-01-25 Thread John Halton
On Jan 24, 2008 10:48 PM, Ken Arromdee [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote (off-list): Maybe I'm missing someone, but in this scenario, isn't it the user who logs in, not the administrator, making the copy? The administrator wouldn't be conveying anything since he's not copying. The user is distributing

Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs

2008-01-25 Thread John Halton
On Jan 25, 2008 12:07 AM, Matthew Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You can execute things you cannot read: $ ls -l /bin/ls ---x--x--x 1 root root 77352 2007-01-30 18:51 /bin/ls Thanks. I stand corrected. However, presumably for many programs licensed under GPL v.3 there will be a number of

Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs

2008-01-25 Thread Arnoud Engelfriet
John Halton wrote: However, presumably for many programs licensed under GPL v.3 there will be a number of associated non-executable files (e.g. under /etc) for which read permissions need to remain in place. If you have a GPLed package, I'm not sure what the implications are of conveying the

Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs

2008-01-25 Thread John Halton
On Jan 25, 2008 9:07 AM, Arnoud Engelfriet [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: My first question would be whether those files would contain sufficient creative expression to qualify for copyright protection. If they don't (and I am not sure something like /etc/make.conf is 'creative'), then GPLv3 cannot

Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs

2008-01-25 Thread Florian Weimer
Just curious, e.g., dreamhost.com modifies Debian .debs to produce their hosting environment, which we Dreamhost users then use on our shell accounts there. If I can do $ cat file then I should always also be able to cat the source (.deb) to that same cat, no? (I can at present.) It's

Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs

2008-01-25 Thread jidanni
FW GPLv3 makes it pretty clear that Dreamhost can take your rights away So all that effort of writing Free Software and the result is there is Johnny, sitting at the shell prompt, unable to see the source code to anything behind it if they decide to close it. I bet the same goes with OLPC then.

Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs

2008-01-25 Thread Ben Finney
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [hypothetically] We here at Gooble know how confusing source code is, and that is why we are making every effort to never let you see it again, accidentally or otherwise. People who are swayed by this will ignore the freedom of the software they use in any case. Why

Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs

2008-01-25 Thread Ken Arromdee
On Fri, 25 Jan 2008, John Halton wrote: Maybe I'm missing someone, but in this scenario, isn't it the user who logs in, not the administrator, making the copy? The administrator wouldn't be conveying anything since he's not copying. The user is distributing someone else's software to

Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs

2008-01-25 Thread Arnoud Engelfriet
Ken Arromdee wrote: To propagate a work means to do anything with it that, without permission, would make you directly or secondarily liable for infringement under applicable copyright law, except executing it on a computer or modifying a private copy. Propagation includes copying,

Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs

2008-01-24 Thread John Halton
On Jan 24, 2008 7:41 AM, Arnoud Engelfriet [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is actually a very intriguing question. If I have a shell account on someone's computer, and I can copy a binary that resides somewhere in /bin (or wherever), is the work being distributed to me? toad:~ ls -l /bin/ls

Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs

2008-01-24 Thread Matthew Johnson
On Thu Jan 24 11:37, John Halton wrote: It seems clear enough that the administrators of toad are propagating /bin/ls. And that propagation is one that enables other parties to make or receive copies. Nor is this mere interaction ... with no transfer of a copy - *running* /bin/ls would fit

Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs

2008-01-24 Thread John Halton
On Jan 24, 2008 11:41 AM, Matthew Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu Jan 24 11:37, John Halton wrote: It seems clear enough that the administrators of toad are propagating /bin/ls. And that propagation is one that enables other parties to make or receive copies. Nor is this mere

Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs

2008-01-24 Thread Arnoud Engelfriet
Matthew Johnson wrote: On Thu Jan 24 11:37, John Halton wrote: It seems clear enough that the administrators of toad are propagating /bin/ls. And that propagation is one that enables other parties to make or receive copies. Nor is this mere interaction ... with no transfer of a copy -

Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs

2008-01-24 Thread jidanni
Dear legal beagles, all I know is if one day I couldn't do [EMAIL PROTECTED] dpkg -l apt-get --print-uris ... wget ... to examine the .debs that were Debian debs but slightly modified by Dreamhost (or other such web host), well that would mean the whole Free Software concept had come to a

Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs

2008-01-24 Thread John Halton
On Fri, Jan 25, 2008 at 03:33:34AM +0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So Dear legal beagles, please close this loophole, if any. As outlined previously in the discussion, I don't think there *is* a loophole here. Anyone using GPL v.3 software (which includes almost all GNU software issued since GPL

Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs

2008-01-24 Thread Ben Finney
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: So Dear legal beagles, please close this loophole, if any. To remove this misapprehension: debian-legal is a discussion forum only. We have no special power to *change* license terms. If there's a loophole, all we can do is expose it. Addressing the loophole will be

Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs

2008-01-24 Thread Ben Finney
John Halton [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: That said, I would be *delighted* if someone can show me where I've gone wrong in my analysis. I don't claim to be a world expert on GPL v.3! Here's a 2003 debian-legal discussion about the ASP loophole:

Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs

2008-01-24 Thread John Halton
On Fri, Jan 25, 2008 at 08:26:19AM +1100, Ben Finney wrote: Here's a 2003 debian-legal discussion about the ASP loophole: URL:http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/03/msg00755.html Thanks. The distinction here is that in the classic ASP loophole situation you are accessing the

Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs

2008-01-24 Thread Matthew Johnson
On Thu Jan 24 22:02, John Halton wrote: On Fri, Jan 25, 2008 at 08:26:19AM +1100, Ben Finney wrote: Here's a 2003 debian-legal discussion about the ASP loophole: URL:http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/03/msg00755.html (Incidentally, I'm assuming that the earlier suggestion of

web hosting providers' modified .debs

2008-01-23 Thread jidanni
Just curious, e.g., dreamhost.com modifies Debian .debs to produce their hosting environment, which we Dreamhost users then use on our shell accounts there. If I can do $ cat file then I should always also be able to cat the source (.deb) to that same cat, no? (I can at present.) Yes I read

Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs

2008-01-23 Thread Ben Finney
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Just curious, e.g., dreamhost.com modifies Debian .debs to produce their hosting environment, which we Dreamhost users then use on our shell accounts there. If I can do $ cat file then I should always also be able to cat the source (.deb) to that same cat, no?

Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs

2008-01-23 Thread Arnoud Engelfriet
Ben Finney wrote: The answer depends on whether Dreamhost are, under the relevant jurisdiction, distributing the modified work to you. It could be argued that they are not: they are merely using the modified work, and allowing you to access a machine they own; thus, the modified work is not