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From: david on 28 Sep 2009 09:06 I've worked with the Lispworks people for many years. They're great folks; produce a superb product worth every penny of its cost; and are always willing to work with others on various exceptions to their licensing policy. However you want to rationalize this thing, it's unethical if nothing else. What's more, you post your "achievement" for all to see. Typical... -- david
From: Pascal J. Bourguignon on 28 Sep 2009 09:07 Frank Buss <fb(a)frank-buss.de> writes: > gnubeard wrote: > >> Yeah, I suppose I could see this being argued back and forth in a >> court. > > No, I think it would be very short. You have modified the libc, because you > don't want to pay for a good product. It is the intention that counts. > > There are other examples for this concept, e.g. involuntary manslaughter > and murder. Both have the same result, but the punishment is much > different, because the intention of the offender was different. It may be an accessibility question then. Perhaps the OP is too slow to use effectively his computers, so he get it slowed down. We did that to run legacy games on faster processors, when they weren't programmed to use real-time but used processor cycles for timing. The intention would be not to go beyond the 5 psychological hours allowed, only that person need ten hours to think and work what another person thinks and words in five hours. So it started from a "good" intention :-) Lawyers must have a lot of fun... -- __Pascal Bourguignon__
From: Raffael Cavallaro on 28 Sep 2009 09:12 On 2009-09-28 08:41:54 -0400, gnubeard <gnubeard(a)gmail.com> said: > My argument to the judge in such a case would be that using such weak > criteria to establish "reverse engineering" would equally prohibit me > from using a replacement C library such as FreeVec (Altivec/SSE/etc > accelerated C library) in debug mode where it tells me what functions > are being called, SIMD registers, etc. 1. But you've already posted here in a public forum that your reason for using a different version of gettimeofday was an attempt to reverse engineer and modify the behavior of LW. 2. Using a debug library or tool to log calls made by LW in order to see how it works would quite likely also been seen as a violation of the no reverse engineering clause. You seem to be thinking about LW as if it were Free (as in freedom) software, where your rights to modify, reverse engineer, etc. count as much as the rights of the copyright holder. That's not the case. The only rights you have wrt LW are those granted by LW in the license. That's what section 1 means when it says "This agreement ("Agreement") sets out the terms and conditions..." If you don't abide by these terms, LW can terminate your license. -- Raffael Cavallaro
From: Pascal J. Bourguignon on 28 Sep 2009 11:14 Tamas K Papp <tkpapp(a)gmail.com> writes: > Notwithstanding the interesting legal arguments about > reverse-engineering or whether LW's lawyers have left a loophole in > there, for me the question is primarily a moral one. Especially with > good-quality free implementations around. Hence the suggestion to place oneself at one meter above the surface of a black hole ;-) -- __Pascal Bourguignon__
From: Kaz Kylheku on 28 Sep 2009 13:09
On 2009-09-28, Joost Kremers <joostkremers(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > gnubeard wrote: >> I'm baffled. How is creating my own implementation of a standard C >> function reverse engineering, in any sense of the term? Or how is >> loading said function with a standard ld feature reverse engineering? > > you found out how LW keeps track of the 5hr limit. that's reverse-engineering, > because you had to analyse LW's functioning and operating to do so. How would this be argued in court? SOme facts. 1. The user in question has not entered into any formal contract with the copyright holder. The plantiff has no signed document saying that $$$ dollars were exchanged, and the defendant has agreed to do such and such. 2. The user in question is simply operating his computer. The consumer has a right to do whatever he wants with equipment he owns. 3. The user is not redistributing the copyrighted work, but only altering its operation for his own use. Therefore he is not infringing copyright. 4. The plaintiff offered the the copyrighted work to the world for free downloadd. In so doing, the plaintiff weakened their grasp on the copyright, by giving up some of their rights. They have given up the distibution right, meaning that anyone can redistribute their program. They have not given up control over derived works though; not anyone isp permitted to redistribute modified copies of the work. The case would basically revolve around the plaintiff wanting to control what the user does with the software on his own computer. IANAL, but I suspect it would be thrown out faster than you can say ``silence in court''. This is analogous to a car manufacturer wanting to stop owners (or independent mechanics acting on their behalf) from poking around under the hood, so that they are forced to use expensive dealer repair services from the manufacturer. Basically, the licensing terms are invalid. LispWorks has given you the software, and once you install it, you can do anything you wish. Even sharing binary patches with other users is completely fair game. If I send you an e-mails aying ``poke these three bytes at these locations in file X to fix the following bug in a proprietary program ...'' there is absolutely nothing wrong or illegal about that. (Except in the imaginations of some software copyright lawyers and their demented clients). It's exactly like telling another Honda owner where to find some component under the hood and how to substitute it with another one. |