Re: Eclipse 3.0 Running ILLEGALY on Kaffe
> >>If the
> >> GPLed work is separate from other works under copyright law, it
> >>doesn't contaminate them at this point.
Walter Landry wrote:
> > This is wishful thinking. The paragraphs after GPL 2c clearly cover
> > collective works.
On Sat, Jan 29, 2005 at 10:02:19AM +0000, Lewis Jardine wrote:
> Are you sure this is the case when the work is unmodified?
>
> As I understand it, in the case of an unmodified work, section 2 (and
> thus, 2b) does not apply: (GPL 2: "You may *modify* your copy or copies
> of the Program or any portion of it, *thus forming a work based on the
> Program*...", my emphasis) - if you don't modify it, you don't activate
> section 2b, and you don't form a work based on the Program. If you have
> some other works that are not "any derivative work under copyright law",
> then you could distribute them alongside the unmodified GPLed work,
> without activating section 2, regardless of how closely the works
> interact with the GPLed work*.
Walter Landry seems to be arguing that the scope of section 2 is the
entity who makes the changes + any copyrightable work distributed by
that entity + running the program + apt sections.
In other words, if you modify emacs so that it loads faster, and then
you distribute emacs with some "patches only" licensed source code,
then you'd be violating the GPL if that source code was in main, but
not if that source code was in non-free. Except, I'm sure he'd argue
that that doesn't matter because emacs isn't running the source code,
it's only displaying it. Or perhaps he'd argue something else which
tries to make notions of functionality a copyright issue.
Anyways, to my mind the thing missing from your explanation (which was
basically good) is that a little critical thinking needs to happen to
identify the work being modified.
Clearly, modification doesn't alter the permissions granted by the
"mere aggregation" clause, because both are in section 2, with the
"mere aggregation" clause being an addition to the modification rules.
So there has to be some other reason -- besides modification -- for
the components of some derived work to be considered as part of a work
(a Program) which is more than mere aggregation.
Here's how I'd phrase the criteria:
If A and B are copyrightable modules of work C, where A is GPLed and B
does not satisfy the terms of the GPL, then distribution is restricted
by the GPL if B was specifically created to go with A.
There are some edge cases where this way of expressing things doesn't
work so well, but we don't seem to be discussing those kinds of things
at the moment.
Finally, it's worth noting that the permission to distribute unmodified
copies only applies to the source. Another way of putting this is that
binaries are always treated as modified copies.
--
Raul
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