Installshield 6 (inter-proc) patches

[Francois Gouget]

On Thu, 20 Dec 2001, Patrik Stridvall wrote:
[...]
> >    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.

   Hmmm, parser error!
   'to get past': 'to circumvent'


[...]
> >    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.

   I did not forget that. But I still do not think a book author would
allow you to publish a patch that would modify the last chapter to
provide a different ending.
   The point is that whatever way you use to distribute your
modifications, they are specific to the original work, alter it and
combines with it to provide a single new work. And these are the
criteria I would use to define a 'derived piece of work'. And since
derived pieces of work reuse the original work it seems only fair that
they can only do so if they respect the license of the original work.

   Let's take a couple of common sense examples and assume that the
original work is a book.
 - a bottle of black ink is not a derived piece of work. Obviously you
can alter the book quite a bit by dropping its content on it and the ink
will definitely merge with the book. But just as obviously the ink is
not specific to your book.
   (computer science equivalent: a file compression utility)
 - a critic's book about the original is not a derived piece of work. It
is clearly specific to the original book but does not modify it and
clearly does not combine with it to form a single piece of work.
   (no real equivalent to this one, closest thing would be an
application/script that uses another, like a script that calls 'ls')
 - as long as you have the right to sell the original book, you should
have the right to sell it bundled with other books. The reason is that
this does not alter the original book and that it does not form a
combined piece of work.
   (linux distributions)
 - but leaflet that replaces the last chapter of the book to provide a
different ending is a derived piece of work. The reason is that it is
specific to the original book, alters the story (the original work of
which the physical book is nothing but a printed representation) told by
the book, and combines with it to form a new work (a new story with a
different ending). Thus you can only distribute it with permission of
the original author, even if you do not distribute the original book
with your leaflet.
   (that's your patch example)


> No particular problem,
> except that some companies might be greedy and want more,
> but hey, do you really wish to give them more?

   I did not express any wishes and in any case they are irrelevant: I
do not have the power to give companies more or less. Now, when I'm
world-dictator for life... :-)


> 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.

   From my point of view open-source is not any different from any
commercial work. Obviously there are legal means to obtain the original
work in both cases (whether you have to pay for it is irrelevant).
Otherwise the point is moot.
   But saying that open-source is different would mean that because you
are not making a direct profit from this work, you are not entitled to
any protection under copyright law. You can't mean that, can you?


--
Francois Gouget         fgouget at free.fr        http://fgouget.free.fr/
           Cahn's Axiom: When all else fails, read the instructions.