[Pipet Devel] Licensing issues

[jarl van katwijk]

> We cannot (and shouldn't) prevent 3rd party BL's. The only way to do that is
> through proprietary (patented) protocols and we don't want to do that. As for
> the authentication mecanism, it has to work for any (even hostile BL's). Napster
> had problems because it's assumed all its clients were the official clients.
> This kind of security is flawed, even more in OSS. If a 3rd party BL can screw
> up the authentication, then nothing prevents a cracker to modify your BL source
> to screw it up.

Do you happen to know if some firm that has this problem somehow took legal action
against this. Or is this not possible?
(I remember this aol vrs M$ struggle about the M$ messenger and Icq. How did thius end,
or is this still going on?)

>

> This means that your BL is not secure. This is why we sould not
> try to prevent 3rd-party BL's (that's the whole point of open-source: someone
> can modify your work). However, if the BL links with the PL, then depending on
> the PL license, a closed-source BL may or may not be legal... but then they
> could provide their own PL and there'd be nothing we can do.

Ok, I see the problem. Legal stuff gives me headaches :)
You're right about us fixing our own problems.

bye,
jarl