BT Home Hub: Continued violation

[Arnoud Engelfriet]

Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> On Apr 10, 2008, Arnoud Engelfriet <arnoud at engelfriet.net> wrote:
>> No it's not. The program at no point during its execution touches or
>> reads its own signature.
> 
> Like, let's see, ELF headers, debugging sections, and such other
> stuff.  Does any of this exempt anything from complying with the
> conditions of the license?

I have no idea what you're trying to say here. In the model I was describing, 
the kernel computes an MD5 over the executable, compares this against an MD5 
obtained from verifying the signature accompanying the executable and decides 
whether to continue execution based on the comparison.

What do ELF headers or debugging sections have to do with this model of 
signature checking?

>> The way you read it suggests that normally I'd have to give you a
>> Linux kernel if I give you a program designed to execute on that
>> kernel.
> 
> I think we're miscommunicating.  You asked why you didn't have to give
> me a copy of the compiler, I quoted the portion of the license that
> said so.  The same applies to other system libraries and the kernel.

The phrase is "Anything that is normally distributed with the major components 
of the operating system". And then there's "compiler, kernel, and so on" in 
between brackets. My reading is that these are examples of *major components* 
and not of the *anything* at the beginning of the sentence.

In other words, I read this phrase as "need not include anything that is 
normally distributed with the compiler, kernel and other major components of the 
operating system". I don't have to give you *header files that come with the 
compiler* or the sources for things like libgcc even though libgcc is in the GPL 
program in binary form. That makes perfect sense to me.

You apparently read this phrase as "need not include the compiler, kernel and 
anything else that is normally distributed with the major components of the 
operating system". I don't believe that reading is correct, because then what is 
  "the major components of the OS"?

>> My own interface definition files I have to give you, of course.
> 
> What would you make of an authorization interface?  Say, the source
> code necessary to get past OS authorization?

In the model I envisage those interfaces are not part of the program but part of 
the operating system (program loader). Right now I could patch Linux to make it 
execute applications only if their signed MD5s occur on a list somewhere in 
/etc. How would you argue that I have to publish the secret key for generating 
those signed MD5s when I add one for your GPLv2 program?

Arnoud

-- 
Arnoud Engelfriet, Dutch & European patent attorney - Speaking only for myself
Patents, copyright and IPR explained for techies: http://www.iusmentis.com/
               Arnoud blogt nu ook: http://blog.iusmentis.com/