While I realise SB is perfectly within it's rights to take this stand, I don't understand the point of it. I also understand that there is unlikely to be any movement on this.

I would understand if I was attempting to distribute a patched copy of the player executable or the PNA module, but apart from the patched GPL'd kernel the arf file is unchanged. I don't see why SB choose to not allow this.

Can someone please explain it to me ?

Also, if I created a service whereby users could upload their arf to be patched then the arf wouldn't be being distributed would it (as I wouldn't be giving them my arf, just patching theirs for them)? After all this is functionally no different to giving them a VB app to do it themselves.

All this, because it is going to be far easier for me to create a page on my Linux box to accept the arf and use tar to patch it than to write a VB app to handle tar files...