[GNU-linux-libre] telegram clients

[bill-auger]

On Mon, 12 Apr 2021 00:26:48 -0400 Richard wrote:
> That sounds bad, but it is vague.  Could you tell me more about these
> restrictions?  Have you studied what they say?

i have changed he subject, to reflect that is discussion is
not about SaaSS - we had long discussion of this this week -
there are ample details on the parabola bug tracker

https://labs.parabola.nu/issues/3010

for brevity, i believe that i can condense jean's main concern

according to my understanding of the GPL, if the authors of that
software had the right to release it under the GPL, and they did
in fact release it under the GPL, then they have in fact, granted
to the entire world, explicit and irrevocable permission to
modify and re-distribute the implementation, for any purpose -
therefore, any proprietary claims which they may otherwise have
had on the protocol/API, would be effectively forfeited, WRT
anyone who has a copy of that implementation

jean is concerned that the author could still make some other
proprietary claim against people who make derivative
implementations of the client, or new, incompatible servers

none of us are lawyers of course, and several FSDG distros
distribute these clients; so this list is the appropriate forum
to discuss it - in fact, it was discussed on this list in 2018

https://lists.parabola.nu/pipermail/assist/2018-July/001141.html

there was a larger issue regarding this program and others like
it, which was not resolved - seeing as we are discussing it
again, i will start a separate thread about it