Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Sat, 15 Feb 2003 02:26:26 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Sat, 15 Feb 2003 02:26:26 -0500 Received: from hermes.fachschaften.tu-muenchen.de ([129.187.202.12]:54501 "HELO hermes.fachschaften.tu-muenchen.de") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id ; Sat, 15 Feb 2003 02:26:25 -0500 Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 08:36:15 +0100 From: Adrian Bunk To: Larry McVoy , Jamie Lokier , Larry McVoy , Rik van Riel , Andrea Arcangeli , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: openbkweb-0.0 Message-ID: <20030215073615.GS20159@fs.tum.de> References: <20030206021029.GW19678@dualathlon.random> <20030213024751.GA14016@bjl1.jlokier.co.uk> <20030213161337.GA9654@work.bitmover.com> <20030213211127.GG20159@fs.tum.de> <20030213220522.GA11214@work.bitmover.com> <20030213225621.GA17508@bjl1.jlokier.co.uk> <20030214203151.GL20159@fs.tum.de> <20030214234517.GA4333@bjl1.jlokier.co.uk> <20030214235724.GA24139@work.bitmover.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20030214235724.GA24139@work.bitmover.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2615 Lines: 56 On Fri, Feb 14, 2003 at 03:57:24PM -0800, Larry McVoy wrote: > On Fri, Feb 14, 2003 at 11:45:17PM +0000, Jamie Lokier wrote: > > > Current German copyright law says that any contractual appointments that > > > disallow the allowed cases of reverse engineering are void. > > > > Exactly. He can say it, it's up to you whether you ignore it. > > As with many things in life, you can choose to behave well or poorly and > the people you help or hurt will act according. > > The slashdot kiddies, as an example, seemed to think it was OK to swap all > the music they wanted for free. The music industry responded by helping > push through the recent round of draconian laws which are much deplored on > slashdot and here for that matter. > > But nobody seems willing to stand up and say "well, maybe if we hadn't been > stealing all this music these laws might not have come into existence". > > I'll leave you to make the BitKeeper connection, I'm sure you are smart > enough to do so. In Germany swapping music for free except for limited copies to friends (for which you pay with every harddisk or CD or CD burner you buy) has been illegal for _many_ years. The part of current German copyright law that says that the highest penalty for copyright infringement are three years in prison is unchanged since 1974. Current German copyright law says you are allowed to reverse engineer under certain circumstances a program you are a licensee of to produce independent programs that interoperate with this proprietary program. Otherwise it would often be impossible to develop software like Samba that has to interoperate with proprietary products - how easy would it be to forbid something like this in the licence terms of the proprietary program. Since the licensee is often in a very weak position compared to the company selling the software current German copyright law says that any contractual appointments that disallow the allowed cases of reverse engineering are void. Both rules make sense to me and whether I like them or not I am smart enough to see the difference between these two cases. cu Adrian -- "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days. "Only a promise," Lao Er said. Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/