Copyright statements in different forms of a work (was: Choosing a License: GNU APL? AFL 3.0?)
Arnoud Engelfriet <arnoud@engelfriet.net> writes:
> Ben Finney wrote:
> > If you grant permission to redistribute at all, it's copyright law
> > that requires [the copyright notice] to be included in any
> > redistributions of that work until you explicitly give permission
> > to the contrary.
>
> One case where this could become problematic is when permission is
> granted to create derivative works. If the derivative work can be
> distributed in binary-only form, then the copyright notices in the
> source code become irrelevant.
I'm not sure how copyright law treats this in general. Is it the case
that a binary form, compiled from a copyrighted source form of a work,
is a "derived work", or is it the original copyrighted work itself?
I imagine that, whatever the answer to the above question -- whether
the redistribution in binary form is either the original work or a
derived work of the original -- the original copyright notice still
*applies*, whether it's included or not.
> In such a case, a requirement like article 2 of the BSD license to
> put a notice in the documentation would be a good idea.
I prefer the GPLv2's section 1, which doesn't distinguish between
different forms of the work. It simply requires:
... that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy
an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep
intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the
absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the
Program a copy of this License along with the Program.
This requires the notices to continue to apply to and accompany *any*
form of the work ("the Program", in GPL definitions) when
redistributed.
--
\ "If [a technology company] has confidence in their future |
`\ ability to innovate, the importance they place on protecting |
_o__) their past innovations really should decline." —Gary Barnett |
Ben Finney
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