Stephan Andre' wrote:
On Friday 25 April 2008 20:49:00 Ian McWilliam wrote:
Ok, Not really wanting to comment on this.... call me a troll, call me
want you want but....
The following rant in NOT about GPL licensing.........
I am neither supporting or denying the the said change to xdpf.
This is a discussion about modifying "standards"..
What is hypocrytical here is the not one person has said the have looked
at the "standard" for PDF to determine the "correct behaviour". Whether
it is for or against peoples wishes, there is a standard somewhere and
even the author of xpdf hints that there is one and what you are
removing is against the "standard".
http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/cracking.html
"... I distribute source code (for Xpdf) under a particular license (the
GPL) which depends entirely on users' goodwill for its effectiveness. If
any of my users ever decided to violate the license, I would probably
never even know about it, much less be able to do anything about it. The
only thing I can do is trust the users.
In light of this, it would be very hypocritical of me to, on one hand,
ask people to honor my licensing restrictions, and, on the other hand,
bypass (or assist others in bypassing) another author's requested
restrictions.
In addition to all of this, Adobe requires that implementors of the PDF
spec adhere to the document permissions.
..."
I haven't read the Adobe PDF sepc or "standard" and have no intention
to. It looks like no body here wants to either. I find that puzzling
seeing.....
According to a recent thread on tech@ recently,
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=120890031123301&w=2
"This patch is a joke. It will never go into OpenSSH since it is
completely incorrect. The standard is clear --
The version string for an SSH client or server is supposed to be
disclosed. It is the standard behaviour, and is done for very good
reasons."
Can anybody explain why is it acceptable to modify a "standard" for
"ports" but not not for "base"?
<flame away>
Ian McWilliam
P.S I hate DRM as much as the next person.
Because the two are completely different concepts. The SSH "patch"
was clueless, both in terms of how OpenSSH works, and the protection
it would(n't) give.
Sorry STeve but we are not talking directly about the SSH patch in
question. It's the concept of modifying software away from it's
documented behaviour / standard.
The removal of the DRM code is has actual benefit, the GPL permits this,
and Adobe *knows* this. This is useless laywer gobble. PDF's are now
an ISO standard.
So if PDF is now an ISO standrard then what does the standard say about
what being modified?
This still dosn't answer why it is acceptable to modify a piece of
software away from it's standards definition
Apples and oranges.
--STeve Andre'
Another example.
Why has the 100 character limit filenames stored in a tar archive not
been modified away from its documented standard. (We all know it's 100
character limit is arcane in modern terms.
So far no one is coming up with well documented valid arguments for
modifying away from documented standards.
Ian McWilliam
