NH>> or X license... People seem to be forgetting that free software NH>> was meant to free you from needing to consulting lawyers before NH>> you can see/use some software's code...).
Huh. You wish. If you are not in GPL/GPL situation, you better go for some MS-EULAs - at least after you paid them money, you probably would know what happens out there and won't have to rely on 20 different opinions from each and every person who touched the code :) NH>> Indeed, if you give away (or sell) patches to whatever NH>> copyrighted software (in this case, the Linux kernel), and the NH>> patches only include your own code, 100% your code, I see no NH>> reason how the license of the original program can effect your NH>> ability to distribute those patches! However some people think otherwise. Indeed, it would be too easy to make _any_ derived work be in the form of patches, one way or another. NH>> Compare this to someone selling a page of text, and saying "if NH>> you insert this after page 17 of The Book of Whatever, then the NH>> resulting book would be much funnier.". How can this be regarded NH>> a copyright violation? As a more realistic example, consider I ask myself that too. But you know, laws, contracts and common sense don't always travel the same route... NH>> someone giving away (or selling) patches that modify a NH>> commercial computer game (add levels, add cheats, etc.). This NH>> might be a violation of some crappy anti-reverse-engineering law NH>> (DMCA?) but not a copyright violation in the traditional sense. DMCA *is* based on copyright and copyright violation laws. That's what 'C' means there. And yes, many game makers, if not all of them, would be not too happy for you selling patches to their game without their consent. NH>> There's one exception to what I just said, though, and I'm not sure if it NH>> applies to the GPL (I think it doesn't). If when you, as the end user, got NH>> the copyrighted work (kernel, book, etc.) agreed never to insert other NH>> stuff (patches, pages, etc.) into it, then you'll need to abide by that NH>> agreement. Copyright law controls distribution, not usage, AFAIK. If I remember right, the copyright laws got into usage domain when some smart*** lawyer learned that when you run the program you create a memory copy of it, and this can be called copying - ergo distribution. But I may be mistaken on this. NH>> any kind of patch you want, but never distributing the result). NH>> If "private patching" is not forbidden, then someone can NH>> distributed patches, users are allowed to apply the patches to NH>> their own copy of the software, and there is no copyright NH>> violation. Again, seems like some people think otherwise. And again, it's too easy to make any GPL-like license almost completely void - just disassemble the program into GPL-core and non-GPL "patches" and make whatever tool that finally assembles it at the destination. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] \/ There shall be counsels taken Stanislav Malyshev /\ Stronger than Morgul-spells phone +972-3-9316425 /\ JRRT LotR. whois:!SM8333 ================================================================= 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]
