On Oct 29, 11:24 am, David Kastrup wrote:
chicks writes:
Ironic, isn’t it, that Adobe’s (and many other companies’) products couldn’t exist without a large number of open-source libraries for things like compression, encryption and image encoding/decoding, many of them written by those ‘linux boys’. Adobe Reader used to display the licenses for those libraries under Help/About. I notice they’ve somehow gotten around the GPL requirement to display them now.
Which "GPL requirement to display"? And are those libraries under the GPL to start with? Which libraries are you actually talking about?
—
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum
The "Patent and Legal Notices" for AR8.1.1, obtained using the "About" menu item, are indeed shorter than those for AR7.0.9 . But there is no attempt to deceive. The version for AR8.1.1 (dated 8/20/2007) ends with:
Portions (c) 1997-2005 1999 2001 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Portions are licensed under the GNU Library General Public License, a
copy of which is included with this software.
and the LGPL license is given by the files:
Acrobat8.1.1/Adobe/Reader8/Reader/Legal/en_US/LGPL.{txt,html }
which end with:
Under the terms of the GNU LIbrary General Public License, you are permitted to make changes to the libgnomespeech.so, libbonobo-2.so, libbonobo-activation.so, libORBit-2.so,
liblinc.so, libcups.co libraries for your own use, and
Adobe delivers with the installed Adobe software
the object code that links with the libgnomespeech.so,
libbonobo-2.so, libbonobo-activation.so, libORBit-2.so,
liblinc.so, libcups.co libraries, as required by the GNU LGPL. You are also permitted to reverse engineer only those portions of the Adobe software that link with and utilize the
libgnomespeech.so, libbonobo-2.so, libbonobo-activation.so, libORBit-2.so, liblinc.so, libcups.co libraries, and only to the extent necessary to debug your changes to the libgnomespeech.so, libbonobo-2.so, libbonobo-activation.so, libORBit-2.so,
liblinc.so, libcups.co libraries. Any other reverse engineering, decompiling or use of utilities or tools to trace, probe, or reveal Adobe software and trade secrets embodied therein, is expressly prohibited. Adobe software contains valuable trade secrets and employs methods protected by patents
of Adobe Software Incorporated.
James Quirk