Hello, One may wonder what is the big deal with this single phrase in LGPL. It basically states something fairly similar with EU software directive:
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:32009L0024 Please see art. 6, "Decompilation": > The authorisation of the rightholder shall not be required where > reproduction of the code and translation of its form within the > meaning of points (a) and (b) of Article 4(1) are indispensable to > obtain the information necessary to achieve the interoperability of > an independently created computer program with other programs, [...] This "decompilation" provision is very narrow, but it says in plain English that there are cases when the user of computer software has the right to copy the software privately and even decompile it. I compare with LGPL 2.1: it says that users of the other program have the right to reproduce/decompile the other program in order to achieve interoperability with the LGPLed library, including with an user-modified version of that library. > you may also combine or link a "work that uses the Library" with the > Library to produce a work containing portions of the Library, and > distribute that work under terms of your choice, provided that the > terms permit modification of the work for the customer's own use and > reverse engineering for debugging such modifications. This is a similar scope with Article 6 (though not identical; nor can it, since it talks about works based on the work while EU directive about any interoperability). The recipient has a right to take actions that fall under reverse engineering (copying, testing, decompiling the whole thing) for interoperability. Integration between the library and the other work is an example of precisely interoperability between the two. LGPL2.1 provision is very narrow too, "for customer's own use" and for debugging why the modified library doesn't work as expected. Not more. In other words, LGPL2.1 *shouldn't need* to say its little phrase today, or apparently surprise corporate lawyers/speakers at all, because this is supposed to be law already in EU: the legal protection of software contains users' right to decompile under specific narrow circumstances, no matter what the proprietary license agreement claims. Since 1991 at least. (The directive precursor of the current one was from 1991; for comparison, LGPL-2.0 seems to be from 1991 as well [1], and LGPL-2.1 from 1999.) Is there some law in Germany, which is contrary to this right? > As long as we do not have a legal decision Commentators say that SAS v. World Programming is a pertinent legal decision, for example: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-05-02/copyright-can-t-block-software-reverse-engineering-court (These are EU examples. In US, things are framed a bit differently, i.e. the right to reverse engineering with the purpose to discover uncopyrightable elements necessary for interoperability with other software is under fair use, with circuit-dependent and case-dependent interpretation.) [1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/lgpl-2.0.html -- Oracle corollary to Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to stupidity what can be adequately explained by malice. (~ adapted from Adam Borowski) _______________________________________________ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss