Re: Is this circumvention of the GPL?

[James Michael DuPont]

Richard
  It seems that this issue is not as big as I
originally thought.
  The code can be extracted, at least one snippet was
done by example.
  This will have to be checked and all the code
extracted to be sure.
  but it might be easier than thought. 

        > I am not quite sure what that means.  Which code
        > could be
        > extracted out with lots of work?
  Some readable source code can be extracted from the
uglified code with much work.

       > 
       > If you can in a reasonable sense extract real
source
       > code,
       > that would solve the problem.  So I would
like to
       > understand
       > exactly what you meant by "code could be
extracted
       > out".

Yes it is possible with effort to do so, that is why
the code was allowed in debian. 

Let me quote a mail from Philipp Frauenfelder to
debian legal about that :
<SNIP
url="http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/1999/debian-legal-199901/msg00069.html";>
        We have strict guidelines which software should be
considered 
        free and which not. Normally, the GPL qualifies for
free 
        software. But vcg has some uglified routines which
certainly are 
        not compatible with the Debian free software
guidelines [2] (if 
        not in letter then certainly in spirit).
</SNIP>

Later on Wichert Akkerman shows that the code can be
deuglified.

<SNIP
url="http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/1999/debian-legal-199901/msg00077.html";>
      Looks like code to remove nodes from a
double-linked list. The uglifying
      seems quite simple to fix though, using a
vi-macro and indent I got it
      readble in a couple of seconds. Here you go:
      {
        GNODE h,*hp;
        assert((node));
        if ((( node )->next) )
                (( (( node )->next) )->before)  = (( node
)->before) ;
        else
                nodelistend = (( node )->before)  ;
        if ((( node )->before) )
                (( (( node )->before) )->next) = (( node )->next) ;
        else
                nodelist = (( node )->next) ;
        h = gs_ide44 ;
        hp = &gs_ide44 ;
        while (h) { 
                if ((( h )->refnum) >=(( node )->refnum) )
                        break;
                hp = &((( h )->next) );
                h = (( h )->next) ;
        }
        *hp = node;
        if (h)
                (( +node )->before) = (( h )->before) ;
        else
                (( node )->before) = gs_ide45 ;
        (( node )->next) = h;
        if (h)
                (( h )->before) = node;
        else 
                gs_ide45 = node;
}
</SNIP>

=====
James Michael DuPont

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