Re: cygwin.dll license (was Re: FreeQt ?)
jgg@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca (Jason Gunthorpe) wrote on 01.06.97 in <[🔎] Pine.LNX.3.96.970601223539.1386F-100000@Wakko.ualberta.ca>:
> I really must admit I find the GPL very cryptic, it's hard to say exactly
> what it means if you look at very small detail. I do think that it makes
> sense however that you should be able to put RCS in a dll and link to the
> dll. The debate around that is all based on the question of what is a
> derived work. One could even argue executing gzip in a pipeline makes
> other elements in the pipeline 'derived' somehow from gzip. The GPL just
> doesn't make that perfectly clear!
Of course, it's actually not the job of the (L)GPL to define "derived
work", and all experts I've heard seem to agree that they made a botch of
it.
The term is defined by law (and international treaty), and it seems quite
clear that putting parts from one work into another, where these parts are
small with respect to both the first and the second work, definitely DO
NOT make the second one a derived work, whatever any license may claim.
Think about where this comes from. If I write a book, and include Hamlet's
famous question somewhere, my book is not a derived work from
Shakespeare's.
Now, you can of course argue about how large some peaces are - if I put
half of Hamlet in my book, and this makes out half of my book, then it
certainly _is_ a derived work.
But nothing Shakespeare could have said about derived works (assuming he
wasn't dead long before this term was invented) can possibly change that.
MfG Kai
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