[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Hole in GPL



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!

=================================================================
To unsubscribe, send mail to linux-il-request@linux.org.il with
the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command
echo unsubscribe | mail linux-il-request@linux.org.il