Author: Jeremiah Penery
Date: 15:12:06 02/17/99
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On February 17, 1999 at 17:17:59, Dan Homan wrote: >On February 17, 1999 at 17:05:39, KarinsDad wrote: > >>All of these Crafty source discussions are interesting, however, they are moot. >> >>The copyright notice is quite clear; "any changes made to this program must also >>be made public in the spirit that the original source is distributed" >> >>* All rights reserved. No part of this program may be reproduced in any * >>* form or by any means, for any commercial (for profit/sale) reasons. This * >>* program may be freely distributed, used, and modified, so long as such use * >>* does not in any way result in the sale of all or any part of the source, * >>* the executables, or other distributed materials that are a part of this * >>* package. any changes made to this program must also be made public in * >>* the spirit that the original source is distributed. * >> >>What this means, regardless of any spin put on it by others (including >>discussions on how mankind builds upon the knowledge of other, etc.), is that if >>you change the source code, you MUST make those change available to Robert. >>Bottom line. This does not mean that you have to send those changes to Robert, >>you just have to make those changes publicly available so that Robert can >>acquire them if he so wishes. >> >>If you modify the source code and do not do this, then you are in copyright >>violation. Not only are you doing something illegal, but you are also doing >>something immoral. Wrong is wrong, no matter what spin you put on it (this is my >>fundamentalist personality speaking Fernando). >> >>Let's take an example. Let's say that you have a special compiler which really >>works well with the Pentium II cpu. You decide to compile the source code with >>this compiler to see if Crafty runs faster compiled with it on your Pentium II >>system as opposed to being compiled with VC++. You find out that vcinline.h >>would execute faster if you made some assembly changes to it. You MUST make >>those assembly changes publicly available. It DOES NOT MATTER if you only run >>that version on your own personal Pentium II. If you change the source, you >>must make those changes available. >> >>If you do not want to abide by the copyright requirements, then you should not >>be modifying Crafty source code. It ISN'T yours to do with as you will. You did >>not spend thousands of hours creating it and improving upon it. You can read it >>to your hearts content. Using Crafty source to create your own program >>(including most of the Crafty clones which have not sent their changes to >>Robert) and not making the source available is illegal. It does not matter if >>you plan on eventually replacing 100% of the Crafty source with 100% of your own >>source or not. Once you make a change, you must make that change publicly >>available. >> >>KarinsDad :| > >I agree with you, but your post has raised an interesting question >in my mind.... > >What triggers the requirement to make the changes publicly available? >If I download crafty, open main.c in an editor and type a few lines >of nonsense, do I have to make these changes available to the public? >If I don't, have I broken the law? > >This sounds like a silly example, and it is. But what triggers the >requirement to make the change public? For the GNU license, it is >any distribution of a modified program that requires you to make >the source code (and your changes) available to interested parties. >Is crafty the same in this regard? I would say that for the general case, any 'serious' changes to the source should be released, and any other changes should be made available on request. i.e. If I change a few evaluation parameters in Crafty [very easy to do], I would not be required to send these in to Bob. (I doubt he'd want to get a lot of 'I've made pawns worth 105 instead of 100, here's the new source' kind of stuff, anyway. :) If someone asks me 'Can you give me the changes you've made to Crafty?', I would be obliged to give them. However, if I completely rewrite the evaluation routine, that would be something which must be sent to Bob. Of course, this is only my interpretation of things... Jeremiah > >If so, is it ok to make whatever changes you like and keep them >private... so long as you do not distribute the modified program? > >Does anyone know the answer to this? > > - Dan
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