This is not a good trend [LWN.net]

This is not a good trend

Posted Mar 1, 2025 21:11 UTC (Sat) by pizza (subscriber, #46)
In reply to: This is not a good trend by Wol
Parent article: Fedora discusses Flatpak priorities

> It's probably got different bundled dependencies. Editing the configurations IS a modification. Etc etc. The binary has been built from the rpm so is almost certainly "modified" as far as the GPL is concerned ...

Uh, not necessarily. Run the configure (or cmake, or whatever) command line with different options, you're not modifying the source at all. Different dependencies present (or not) can also affect the build, again without modifying any source code.

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This is not a good trend

Posted Mar 3, 2025 6:15 UTC (Mon) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link] (2 responses)

From the GPL, version 3:

> To “modify” a work means to copy from or adapt all or part of the work in a fashion requiring copyright permission, other than the making of an exact copy. The resulting work is called a “modified version” of the earlier work or a work “based on” the earlier work.

In other words: If you distribute any file that is not 100% identical to a file provided by upstream, then you have modified the work.

You can scream until you're blue in the face that this is inconvenient, unreasonable, not what people do in practice, overly strict, etc., but if you get sued, the courts will not be interested in anything outside of the four corners of the license as it is actually written. So you should comply with the license as it is written, or at least be prepared to comply when some upstream inevitably asks you to do so.

This is not a good trend

Posted Mar 3, 2025 13:55 UTC (Mon) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (1 responses)

> In other words: If you distribute any file that is not 100% identical to a file provided by upstream, then you have modified the work.

...but that only matters if you do so "in a fashion that requires copyright permission".

Meanwhile. These copyright holders don't get to scream "BUT MAH TRADEMARKS!!!" if you create derivatives of their F/OSS that contain their trademarks, but also scream "BUT MAH TRADEMARKS!!!" if you first *strip out* every one of their trademarks and call it something completely different.

This is not a good trend

Posted Mar 3, 2025 18:59 UTC (Mon) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link]

> Meanwhile. These copyright holders don't get to scream "BUT MAH TRADEMARKS!!!" if you create derivatives of their F/OSS that contain their trademarks, but also scream "BUT MAH TRADEMARKS!!!" if you first *strip out* every one of their trademarks and call it something completely different.

I agree. But I have never heard of the latter happening. I think you just made it up.