Installshield 6 (inter-proc) patches

[Patrik Stridvall]

>    I see exactly what you mean. You mean a binary patch that says
> things like:
>  * delete bytes 2294 to 2297
>  * replace bytes 38455 to 39345 with "...."
>  * insert "...." at offset 41753

Yes.
 
>    Such a patch is very specific to a given source version 
> but does not
> include any of the original source.

Yes, but that is not a very problematic restriction.
 
>    Well, if you can legally use such a patch to work-around the LGPL
> license, then you can use it to get past *any* license: GPL, AFPL, MS
> shared-source, .... whatever. And this is not only true of 
> source files,
> this is also true of binary files: you can apply such a patch to
> executables, libraries, mp3s, mpegs, ...

It means what you mean by get past, but OK for the sake of argument:
Yes.

>    This has already been done and the author very quickly got into hot
> water. IIRC it was less that two years ago, about a GPL game and an
> individual who published a mod as a patch to the game binaries but
> refused to publish his source. I'm not sure how it ended. You can
> probably research it in your copious amounts of spare time, I think
> there was an article on it on Slashdot at the time.

I rememember. Of course it was impopular, I do not question that.
The question is: Was it it illegal?

>    But I can assure you that no company in a 'developped' 
> country would
> try such a thing.

In the form above perhaps not so likely, but doing a proprietory
Crypto API implementation with a patch to make Wine use it,
much more likely.

> If such a stunt were recognized as legal 
> then it would
> spell the end of copyright of all electronic forms of songs, movies,
> books, ... You can be sure that the RIAA, MPAA and all the other
> entertainment companies in the world out would never allow such a
> thing... and for once I say that they would be right.

Please calm down.

You forgot that the end user still need to legally get hold of
the work somehow. For normal commercial stuff this involves
paying for it and the author will get payed just like he did in
the old non-digital world for _each_ copy. No particular problem,
except that some companies might be greedy and want more,
but hey, do you really wish to give them more?

Open source is more problematic since the end user legally can
get hold of the work for free and thus any distribution
restrictions is meaningless since the end user doesn't distribute.
But hey, do you really think this so important that you wish
to give companies more power than they already have?