[PATCH] fdisk.c: major whitespace/style cleanup

Rob Landley rob at landley.net
Sun Feb 26 23:51:53 UTC 2006


On Sunday 26 February 2006 3:58 pm, Bernd Petrovitsch wrote:
> On Sun, 2006-02-26 at 15:42 -0500, Rob Landley wrote:
> > On Sunday 26 February 2006 9:10 am, Bernd Petrovitsch wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > And if I publish an ARM binary of a standard package I don't have to
> > configure the relevant cross-compiler toolchain for you upon request.
>
> Of course not.
> But - technically speaking and IMHO - such a toolchain must exist in a
> way that I can get it to work without having to reverse-engineer an
> undocumented programming language and write a compiler before.

In your opinion.  I don't think that holds up legally.  For one thing, you're 
arguing that nothing written in Visual Basic can ever be distributed under 
the GPL, and there's plenty of counter-examples to that.  (And no, 
Chilisoft's VB for Linux isn't open source and won't be because it was 
created with code licensed from Microsoft.)

In theory, if I as the author of a program build it with a compiler I don't 
release, and GPL the source code, you have no recourse against me because as 
the copyright holder my rights to distribute the work do not derive from the 
license, so I can't violate my own license and infringe on my own rights.

And if I'm the sole author, you have no grounds to sue third party 
distributors of unmodified versions of my code, because you have no standing.  
(It's not _your_ copyright being infringed.)

So you're really not talking about a practical consideration in the first 
place.

> > (I remember reading something about this in the GPL3 draft, but I don't
> > remember GPL2 mentioning this at all.  It's been a while though...)
>
> I didn't read GPLv3 up to now and it is not that explicit in GPLv2 but
> somewhat indirectly implied IIRC.

"Indirectly implied" and $3 will buy you a cup of coffee at Starbuck's.

Your interpretation is not enforceable.

> [...]
>
> > > ACK. But it makes sense to store that document (or source code) in a
> > > file format which is actually known by text editors/word processors
> > > enough to be actually of use (even if e.g. unnecessary formatting is
> > > partly lost).
> >
> > "Better" and "makes more sense" are not the same as "enforcibly required
> > to comply with the terms of the GPL".
>
> Yes, the former is law people wording, the latter is my tech person
> wording (trying to) the get the point to the readers of my mail.

If I was the author of a program like this, and you came complaining to me, my 
response would be "If you don't think you can legally receive or distribute 
this program without violating the GPL, then don't.  Have a nice day."

Having the source code means you can see how I did what I did.  Adapt it to 
another compiler or port it to another language, that's your choice.  If I 
wrote it in Power PC assembly I don't owe you a Mac Mini to run it on either.

> 	Bernd

Rob
-- 
Never bet against the cheap plastic solution.



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