Utah's anti-spyware law vs GPL

Posted Apr 1, 2004 21:57 UTC (Thu) by jamienk (guest, #1144) [Link]

You don't have to agree to the GPL to use GPL'd software. You only have to abide by its terms when you distribute (give or sell) it or derivatives of it.

If some piece of Free software does spy on your computing, I believe they should let you know that they are doing it and give you the option to to not allow it.

Posted Apr 2, 2004 6:24 UTC (Fri) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

As "jamienk" stated, the GPL doesn't concern itself with use at all. Simple use is
unregulated by the license, unlike that of most proprietaryware EULAS out there, with
the exception of the "author is not responsible for damages" type clauses.

It may be, however, that in ordered to comply with the law, certain distros and specific
applications may need to make certain information a bit more prominent, particularly the
auto-update type applications. (Wait.. distros not affected, due to the OS exemption
clause, which BTW also exempts MSWormOS eXPrivacy...) That shouldn't be to big an
issue for anything sold off-the-shelf in the state. It could perhaps be technically difficult
for authors wherever in the world they might be trying to comply with laws of a state they
don't care about, but no more than, say, the difficulty of a US site trying to comply with
the anti-nazi laws of parts of Europe, when the US protects such under US Constitution,
First Amendment (Freedom of Speech). Further, given the effectively anti-open-source
laws on the books such as the DMCA and similar, the US is probably not the best choice
for many such open source authors to travel already. (Dimitry Skylarev (sp?) wasn't an
open source author, but certainly ran afoul of the DMCA, as a case in point..)

However, as "jamienk" stated, encouraging informed consent for the few open source
apps that might be affected is a GOOD thing, IMO.

Duncan