Bill Rogers wrote:Robert
I have heard of GPL but only as it applies to chess. Is it an amendant to the Nations copyright laws? If not then I don't know how well it would stand up in a court of law.
Bill
It has already stood up in the courts. It is a very specific license agreement that anyone can release software source code under. It doesn't replace the copyright for a user, since the person that writes something _always_ holds the copyright unless he signs it away to someone else, as often happens for journal articles as one example. But the GPL is very clear on what anyone other than the author can do with the source that is distributed under the GPL. The Free Software Foundation has attorneys that deal with GPL violators.
It is very similar in context (but obviously not in meaning) to the license agreements we all accept with we use software distributed/sold to us by (say) Microsoft.
Bill Rogers wrote:Robert
I have heard of GPL but only as it applies to chess. Is it an amendant to the Nations copyright laws? If not then I don't know how well it would stand up in a court of law.
Bill
The copyright laws don't need amending. They forbid any form of copying that is not authorized by the rights owner, and that is good enough. The GPL merely states the conditions that the owner attaches to his granting of the permission to copy.
Violate the conditions, and you cannot claim you had permission. So you will be treated as any other thief, prosecute to the full extent of the law.
Bill Rogers wrote:I was always under the impressiion that the software laws in this country stated that it took a complete 10% change in the software to declare it a new program.
[...]
If I am wrong or there has been some changes in the Federal Rules then maybe someone can point me to the offical location where they are disputed.
There is no such law, so there is no such dispute.
There is a myth under the fair use doctrine frequently employed to try to wriggle out of copyright violations that sorta fits your interpretation. It doesn't hold in court, of course, because fair use about quotes for use in educational or scholarly works, criticism, parody, and news reporting. Fair use is NOT about making small changes (or large changes for that matter) to produce a new work.
Taking ANY part of copyrighted work is subject to copyright violations.
Bill Rogers wrote:Hi fellas
I was always under the impressiion that the software laws in this country stated that it took a complete 10% change in the software to declare it a new program. That would mean if a piece of software contained 30,000 lines of code to be able to claim a new program with sould take 3,000 new lines of code added to the original.
I worked for a software house for 15 years and although it had nothing to do with chess they operated under those rules as they claimed to know the Federal regulations for such things.
If I am wrong or there has been some changes in the Federal Rules then maybe someone can point me to the offical location where they are disputed.
Bill
According to the GPL, if you keep _one_ original line from a copied source, this is not considered original and is a violation of the GPL unless the modified program is also released under the GPL.
I do not think that it is logical that if you copy only 1 original line fron a source then this is a violation of the GPL.
The GPL may say it but one line that is the same(if you do not find more than it) can clearly be a case when the programmer even did not read the code.
It is more logical to say that you are not allowed to copy significant part when the court will decide if part that is the same considered to be a signigicant part.
It is not logical to accuse a programmer for breaking the GPL only because the program has the line i++; that is also in some program that is protected by the GPL.
Bill Rogers wrote:I have heard of GPL but only as it applies to chess. Is it an amendant to the Nations copyright laws? If not then I don't know how well it would stand up in a court of law.
The GPL and other forms of copyleft just grant permission to copy under certain circumstances. In the case of GPL, when the copier includes source code. It's that simple. It doesn't need an ammendment-- it's still copyrighted like anything else.
Uri is right, of course: like with any crime, copyright violtions can only be punished in court if it can be proven beyond reasonable doubt that you committed the crime, i.e. indeed copied the work. Identical lines in the work you alegedly copied from are not really evidence if they are common idiom of the programming language. As most programs consist for a large part of idiom, there can be a lot of coincidental matches with a high probability, making it more difficult to pass the "reasonable doubt" threshold. One line would almost certainly not be enough, (unless it happens to ontain program name and version number. )
When you hack windows, change some code, do you realy think u can sell it as a new product?
Bill Gates would be very happy to get you to court
Therefore I say - also to Olivier - that with chess software it's always also about strength. How does Windows compete? How does strength have an impact? But in chess it's about strength, and only about strength.
Could you please tell me how something could be a clone if it's terribly stronger than the original? Ok, I understand if it's about legal rules, but from the viewpoint of a personality, an entity, how could something be a copy if it's in real someone else?
And Olivier is also concerned about morality. Fine, as a concept. So, we as user should care about morality. But strength has not so much impact allegedly?
I think, the whole clone concept sucks if 1) a copy is assumed if something is totally stronger and 2) if it's morally higher to use weaker software. That is counter intuitive and IMO classic nonsense. Finally it would hinder progress in computerchess.
-Popper and Lakatos are good but I'm stuck on Leibowitz
