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Re: Hole in GPL
- To: Moshe Zadka <moshez(at-nospam)zadka.site.co.il>
- Subject: Re: Hole in GPL
- From: Ariel Biener <ariel(at-nospam)fireball.tau.ac.il>
- Date: Sun, 31 Dec 2000 18:54:57 +0200 (IST)
- cc: Linux-IL Mailing List <linux-il(at-nospam)cs.huji.ac.il>
- In-Reply-To: <20001231031236.ED05CA84F@darjeeling.zadka.site.co.il>
- Sender: linux-il-bounce(at-nospam)cs.huji.ac.il
On Sun, 31 Dec 2000, Moshe Zadka wrote:
I think that the law does take into account what is common knowledge, and
what is a general accepted idea.
You can also claim that that thing you drive in (4 wheels and a engine) is
called a "kachabooboo". There are no laws for speeding or no parking or
other shit for kachabooboos, only for cars.
--Ariel
> In the long, glorious and quite idiotic tradition of finding stupid
> ways of going around the GPL, I submit the following dumb idea.
>
> The GPL does attempt to define ``source code'', but here's an easy
> way to go around that definition. What if you write an IDE, which
> saves the files in some undocumented binary format? The binary
> format *is* the source: it is not generated from anything. It
> can even be the case that there is no textual representation for
> the program. You don't have to release the IDE (the GPL says nothing
> about tools to modify source code), but you can release the
> binary format (which is your source), as well as executable files.
> Since the GPL says nothing about tools to transform the binary format
> into executables, you don't have to release that binary format-> c code
> you use internally (which uses straight forward code generation,
> since the language you're using is very close to C, with some
> idiotic things like "bigger parenthesis" so it won't be mere text).
>
> So you can take GPL'ed C, compile it into your binary format,
> and declare that format as the source. No one will be able to
> edit it (perhaps the binary format is even strongly encrypted,
> and the IDE you don't release has the password compiled it),
> but you're still complying with the terms of the GPL.
> --
> Moshe Zadka <sig@zadka.site.co.il>
> This is a signature anti-virus.
> Please stop the spread of signature viruses!
>
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--
Ariel Biener
e-mail: ariel@post.tau.ac.il
PGP(6.5.8) public key http://www.tau.ac.il/~ariel/pgp.html
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