[wp-hackers] Premium plugin protection

[Iain Cambridge]

The key word there is opinion, I just did a quick search for "GPL
Violations obfuscated code" to see if there has been a test case to
make this not just an opinion but fact. Again, the license doesn't
apply to the copyright holder therefore they can distribute the item
in any way they like.

I do agree tho that not having GPL code in open plain human readable
freely available code is lame.  I just don't agree with people saying
you can't GPL obfuscated code when there seems to be nothing within
the GPL itself that explictly says so and there seems to be no test
case stating so.

Iain

On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 4:38 PM, Andrew Nacin <wp at andrewnacin.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 11:06 AM, Iain Cambridge <wackiebackie at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> By decrypting it. Since it's got to be machine readable (modifications
>> & distrubitions only) it will have a decrypting method within the code
>> somewhere.
>>
>> The terms and conditions only apply to "COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND
>> MODIFICATION" and not to the ability to attach the license to code.
>> Simply put if I wanted to encrypt all my code and put it into a
>> seperate file and then run it thought mcrypt and eval there is no
>> valid reason that I can see I can't GPL that code. It would just be
>> silly.
>>
>> Iain
>
>
> The Free Software Foundation is very clear in their opinion that encrypted
> or obfuscated source code is not source code.
>
> That's not to say you can't ship encrypted, compressed, obfuscated, or
> minified source code, only that you need to make the unencrypted,
> uncompressed, unobfuscated, or unminified source available. Preferably in
> the distribution, but that's not required.
>
> Not doing so is just lame, frankly. :-)
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