Installshield 6 (inter-proc) patches

[Francois Gouget]

On Thu, 20 Dec 2001, Gavriels State wrote:

> Francois Gouget wrote:
> >    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
> > 
> >    Such a patch is very specific to a given source version but does not
> > include any of the original source.
> > 
> >    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, ...
> 
> At Corel, we investigated this issue with respect to redistributing a 
> patch to MFC to get it building under Wine (at the time it didn't).  The
> MFC license did not allow redistribution of MFC source code.

   Yes, MFC is very annoying as it does not compile as is.


> The lawyer's opinion was that a patch of this sort was perfectly legitimate.

   Interesting. Do you know if the 'intent' of the patch entered into
consideration in the opinion of the lawyer? I.e. I believe that
sometimes the law gives you greater latitude if your purpose is to
ensure 'interoperability' or 'compatibility'.
   Still, I think I am not going to publish such a patch until I can get
some lawyer advice of my own :-)


--
Francois Gouget         fgouget at free.fr        http://fgouget.free.fr/
  Any sufficiently advanced Operating System is indistinguishable from Linux