Re: Eclipse 3.0 Running ILLEGALY on Kaffe
"Michael K. Edwards" <m.k.edwards@gmail.com> writes:
> On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 09:08:59 -0500, Brian Thomas Sniffen
> <bts@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>> Combining X+Y in the way that you have described is anything but
>> mechanical: it is a task which typically takes a skilled programmer a
>> great amount of time and thought. Different programmers might do it
>> in different ways. I'm not referring here to the work done by ld, but
>> to the process of building a new program which has libfoo as a
>> component.
>
> I agree that competent build integration is hard; I've done it many
> times, and it's real work. But "work" isn't the criterion for
> copyright; it's "inclusion of copyright material". No matter how
> complex the ld incantation required, the action performed by that
> incantation is mechanical and un-creative. The ld incantation might
> be a copyrightable fragment, but X+Y isn't a copyrightable collection.
> I think (IANAL). And in any case it isn't a derivative work.
I largely addressed this in a separate message I just sent, so don't
feel obliged to reply here as well -- but I'm not talking about the
build integration. I'm talking about programming.
>> Additionally, the program ultimately delivered to the user isn't X
>> with some minor bits of Y. It contains big chunks of Y -- one per
>> function used, at least -- directly copied. Just being in a different
>> memory space isn't enough to change the relationship between the
>> creative parts of the works. The program vim encompasses a copy of
>> libc.
>
> Do you have precedent on this? Check out the Lexmark decision for an
> example of how a court will slice things along a "functional vs.
> expressive" plane to find that one piece of software that uses another
> doesn't infringe its copyright unless a human has selected expressive
> portions for copying into the flow of the new work's source code.
I think you've missed my point here --
> Lifting an implementation from one code base and placing it in another
> is copyright infringement (Cadence v. Avant!, etc.). Calling the
> implementation via a public API isn't. And as for the "header
> fragments" bit, I would expect a court to rule that they're entirely
> functional and, even if they weren't, there's an implied license to
> use them for their functional purpose.
-- yup, definitely. I'm not convinced by header fragments either.
I'm talking about the entire copy of libc put onto my system when I
say "apt-get install vim".
-Brian
--
Brian Sniffen bts@alum.mit.edu
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