Re: GPL traitor !

[Alan Mackenzie]

In gnu.misc.discuss Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com> wrote:
> Alan Mackenzie wrote:
>> That bit of the law doesn't allow to hack the program
>> you've cracked, though.

> No, as I've said, the part of the law that does is this:
>     <http://www.copyright.gov/title17/circ92.pdf> Page 69
>     Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an
>     infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to
>     make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of
>     that computer program provided:
>     (1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an
>     essential step in the utilization of the computer program in
>     conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other
>     manner,

> You've already been quoted a court case that gives enormous latitude
> to which changes may be considered "essential", and that latitude
> includes adding new functionality.

Hyman, you must learn to read things in their proper context.  That was
a program being mildly modified by a company purely for its own internal
use, and even that was a pretty margianl decision by the judge.

Whilst what you say there may not be untrue, it is misleading.  The
scenario permeating this thread is of somebody enhancing a copyright
program, the GCC, with his enhancements which don't conform to the
GCC's license in a separate binary file, then DISTRIBUTING the whole.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).