Re: More GPL questions

[David Kastrup]

Stefaan A Eeckels <hoendech@ecc.lu> writes:

> On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 12:32:34 +0200
> David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> wrote:
>
>> Stefaan A Eeckels <hoendech@ecc.lu> writes:
>> 
>> > I write an original program that happens to use your GPLed
>> > library. I license my source code under a non-Free license to
>> > Alex. He compiles my code, and links it with your GPLed library that
>> > happened to be on his system (or that he downloaded for the purpose,
>> > for all I care).  Go ahead, sue me for copyright violation.
>> 
>> <URL:http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6366>
>> 
>>     The Copyright Act, at 17 U.S.C. §101, is a little vague and
>>     doesn't say anything at all about software:
>> 
>>         A ``derivative work'' is a work based upon one or more
>>         pre-existing works, such as a translation, musical
>>         arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture
>>         version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment,
>>         condensation or any other form in which a work may be recast,
>>         transformed or adapted. A work consisting of editorial
>>         revisions, annotations, elaborations or other modifications
>>         which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship,
>>         is a ``derivative work''.
>> 
>> Now while we are not talking software here, the last sentence makes
>> clear that even a work which as a whole represents an original work of
>> authorship can be a derivative work.
>
> That's to be read in its entirety:
>
>>         A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations,
>>         elaborations or other modifications which, as a whole,
>>         represent an original work of authorship, is a ``derivative
>>         work''.
>
> An original program in source code format, and contains function
> and/or system calls does not consist of "revisions, annotations,
> elaborations or other modifications" to the libraries or the OS.

Sigh.  But a literary work consisting of annotations does not contain
material from the original work.  It is, as a whole, an original work
of authorship.

> It's a wholly new work. It contains _no_ code from the libraries or
> the OS, and thus it cannot be a derivative work.

But in the literary case, exactly that does _not_ hold, according to
the letter of the law.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum