[thelist] cheap software spam - how do they do it?

[Shawn K. Quinn]

On Wed, 2006-03-22 at 16:00 +1100, Robert Gormley wrote:
> Even you must admit there's more than a little hypocrisy at work
> there. GPL advocates will fearlessly and ferociously defend their
> licensing against infringers.

Most will; most notably, Linus Torvalds has failed to do so with regard
to use of binary-only modules in the Linux kernel, on the basis that
"some support of video cards which only come with a blob-o-bits is
better than none".

Getting closer to on-topic now...

> But when another's choice of license (that 'freedom' thing) makes life
> difficult, well, we can look at ways to circumvent that. To quote the
> gplflash website, one suggested option for trying to get around
> Adobe / Macromedia's licensing:
> 
> "Another option is for developers who has legally optained a copy of
> the specifications, to give his/hers copy to another developer, in the
> same way you can give a book to a friend.

Unfortunately, I think in this case the license still applies, otherwise
non-EULA-sanctioned use of copyright restricted shrinkwrap-and-box
software would be at much higher levels. (The usual caveats that I'm not
an attorney apply, of course.)

> I'm at a loss to understand how one can justify the sacrosanctity of 
> their license of choice, but that another license, protected by the
> same laws that governs theirs, is fair game.

Which makes me wonder, did Macromedia call the Flash specification an
"Open Internet Standard" in their original press release and *not*
expect people to take this at face value, fine print notwithstanding?

In any event, we can hope that Adobe's preference for truly free and
open standards (Postscript, Type 1 fonts, PDF) wins out over
Macromedia's lock-it-down mentality. Actually opening up the standard is
of course what I consider the "right way" to fix the problem.

As it stands now, of course, this is an issue that Webmasters should
know about and plan for.

-- 
Shawn K. Quinn <skquinn at speakeasy.net>