Raul Miller wrote:
The GPL just equated the two, before the colon! It states, clearly, that the "a work based on the program" is "a derivative work under copyright law", and then, using a colon and the introductory phrase "that is to say", it states that "a work based on the program" is "a work containing...". My point is that the second statement is not stating the same thing, so it can NOT be a re-statement. It must be something else.On 5/9/05, Humberto Massa <humberto.massa@almg.gov.br> wrote:You can't re-state something saying a different thing. GPL#0 says that "a work based on the Program" is "a derivative work under copyright law", and then says "that is to say, a work containing...", which is NOT a re-statement of a "derivative work under copyright law".That's another re-statement of what "a work based on the Program" means.
Yes and no. The GPL is the authoritative document on whatever it wants to define and whatever it CAN define (the GPL CANNOT define what is "a derivative work under copyright law", for instance)... but IF AND ONLY IF it defines it without ambiguity.The GPL is not defining what a derivative work under copyright law means. It's defining what a "work based on the Program" means.
It had equated the two of them in the first part of the phrase.
But cats are not outside the scope of the Domestic Pets Handboook. If you were not trying to win the argument at all costs, you would see that my paragraph in quotes, above, has EXACTLY the same grammatical structure as GPL#0. And the interpretation you are giving to this disposition of the GPL#0 is exactly the same I am giving for cats. You *are* saying that every work that "contains the Program or a portion of it" is a "work based on the Program", as per the GPL. But it's not! Now, every "derivative work under copyright law" is a "work based on the Program"... nothing more, nothing less...What the GPL actually does is defining a cat this way: '' a cat is the animal on the page 3 of the Domestic Pets Handbook, that is to say, an animal with four legs and whiskers. ''. Does this defines all animals with four legs and whiskers as being cats?Not actually. Cats are outside the scope of copyright law.