From: XiaoJunZheng <zx...@gn...> - 2004-04-16 19:52:24
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Ka-Hing Cheung wrote: > I took a quick look at the website. It seems that the author claims that he's > not breaking any laws, but the relevant piece of law that he mirrored > (http://openq.linuxsir.org/doc/comtiaoli.txt) seems to suggest otherwise. > > Here's a rough translation of 16.3 and 17: > "16. Software's legal cloner has the following rights" > "3) for using the software in a computation environment or improve its feature > and perform necessary modifications, but unless the contract specifies, > without the software's copyright holder's permission, may not provide third > party the modified software." > "17. for education and research software's idea and concept, by installing, > displaying, loading the software, etc, may use the software without copyright > holder's permission or pay the copyright holder." > > Interesting thing is that, the author of OpenQ says that OpenQ is for > educational and research purposes, so it's legal. But 17. does not say that > you may distribute anything, while 16.3 explicitly mentions that you may not. >modified Your understanding of item 16 is not exact. The Chinese word "FuZhiPin" there dosen't mean clone or emulator,it just means re-distributed copy or modified version. Openq is a clone or an emulator of official QQ client and its code is NOT based on official QQ client. The relationship between openq and official QQ client is just like that between Gaim and official aim/icq/msn client.So it is not break item 16,otherwise gaim will become illegal in China as well. SuperMMX wrote: > maybe ZouDan's is the most popular plugin in other platform, so the Tencet Inc. > forced him to give up the development. In the other side, Tencent Inc. probably > has no such big power to force a developer out of China to give up.. As to the > second gaim plugin i mentioned in the last post, despite of the disclaim that > the plugin is developed by taking QQ as a black box (sniffering the packet, and > analyzing the protocol), IMHO it is still illegal. that's my 2 cents, and i should > admit that i know little about law, especially IP.. 1. Although the author of openq is not in China, the homepage of openq (http://openq.linuxsir.org) is in China,which is hosted by a Chinese linux forum. 2. "reverse-engineering" or changing the official QQ client is not permitted according to the Licence of the official QQ client. However openq is a rewrited one, which is developed by taking QQ as a black box according to the auther. There is no law shows that coding from this way is illegal in China. |
From: Zheng X. <zx...@gn...> - 2004-04-17 14:43:51
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SuperMMX wrote: > But, the most importand thing is that it is illegal, so the first plugin > for gaim , aka ZouDan's, has to be closed. > maybe ZouDan's is the most popular plugin in other platform, so the Tencet Inc. > forced him to give up the development. Ka-Hing Cheung wrote: > Oh, I agree 100% that it should be legal. Even though I don't use qq if someone > wants to work out a gaim plugin based on that I think it would be cool. > > Out of curiorisity, anyone know why the previos QQ plugin was deemed illegal? ZouDan claimed his qq plugin(libqq) "had to be closed" on 2002-06-21 (http://zd.linux.com.cn/). But we can easily find his latest version based on gaim0.64. We know that Gaim0.64 was released on 2003-05-30. That is to say, ZouDan's plugin is still under development before 30th May 2003. "Tencet Inc. forced him to give up the development". That is just a guess made by other people. Neither Tencet Inc. nor ZouDan confirmed it. Even if this guess was right, we can only infer from it that the plugin had affected Tencet's profit, not that it had breaked Chinese laws. ZouDan's qq plugin(libqq), which is based on gaim, is not free software, but gaim is GPL'd. As I know, many Chinese say that ZouDan's GaimQQ(Gaim + libqq) is illegal because they think it broke GPL. |
From: Ka-Hing C. <ja...@ja...> - 2004-04-16 21:33:16
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> Your understanding of item 16 is not exact. The Chinese word > "FuZhiPin" there dosen't mean clone or emulator,it just means > re-distributed copy or modified version. > Openq is a clone or an emulator of official QQ client and its > code is NOT based on official QQ client. The relationship > between openq and official QQ client is just like that between > Gaim and official aim/icq/msn client.So it is not break item > 16,otherwise gaim will become illegal in China as well. Oh, I agree 100% that it should be legal. Even though I don't use qq if someone wants to work out a gaim plugin based on that I think it would be cool. Out of curiorisity, anyone know why the previos QQ plugin was deemed illegal? -khc |