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Re: How long is it acceptable to leave *undistributable* files in the kernel package?



@ 17/06/2004 15:30 : wrote Raul Miller :

False dichotomy.

There's nothing preventing a collective work from being a
derivative work.

On Thu, Jun 17, 2004 at 03:24:23PM -0300, Humberto Massa wrote:
No, Raul. The law. USC17, BR copyright law, and probably every
copyright
law following the Geneva convention *does* such a distinction.

I did not say that there was no distinction.

I did say that there was no dichotomy.

But there is. You see, in Law, when you enumerate things, you are separating things. (dichotomy = two separated in Greek) When GPL#0 says "derivative works under copyright law", it's excluding: (under BR copyright laws) originary works, collective works, anthology/compilation works. It's saying "only those defined as derivative under copyright law, which /in/ /casu/ would be "those works that are an intellectual creation on their own, but result from a transformation of another work." (law 9610/98).

So, there really is a dichotomy. Derivative works and Anthology works are separated in their birth. If you want both, you *must* say "derivative works of the program *and* anthology works containing the program". You can't (in the realm of the GPL) even say "works based on the program", because you defined this in section #0 as begin "derivative works". /solamente/.

As I showed you in the last e-mail, the Linux kernel is an anthology works, where the individual works have an intrincated graph of derivation (like, as factually incorrect examples: ext2 being derived on VFS [or is it /vice-versa/??], both being derived on the VM code, and so on and on and on). The individual works are *each* and *every* patch that entered the kernel tree in the last eleven years.


--
br,M



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