Comment Re:Loophole? (Score 2, Insightful) 574
> The idea is that an author may license some GPL code that has code to allow
> the source dto be downloaded, and the license may say you have to keep that
> feature. You can safely avoid software that has no such nonse...
You're right, you can. And how many users are really paying to the license when they install an application?
Right, but what implications will this have, for example, on PHP applications which typically store sensitive information in the source files. (Sensitive being database passwords, directory paths, etc). Say an author codes in a means to output the sourcecode of any of the applications files including the one with the configuration information in it. Is the user forbidden from removing that function, or modifying it? Most people I know currently frown upon that kind of functionality, we call it a "backdoor" /trojan, but the GPL3 could endorse it?
Have I completely misunderstood the impact of such a clause?
> the source dto be downloaded, and the license may say you have to keep that
> feature. You can safely avoid software that has no such nonse...
You're right, you can. And how many users are really paying to the license when they install an application?
Right, but what implications will this have, for example, on PHP applications which typically store sensitive information in the source files. (Sensitive being database passwords, directory paths, etc). Say an author codes in a means to output the sourcecode of any of the applications files including the one with the configuration information in it. Is the user forbidden from removing that function, or modifying it? Most people I know currently frown upon that kind of functionality, we call it a "backdoor"
Have I completely misunderstood the impact of such a clause?
