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Re: What exactly is Derivative ?



On Mon, Mar 15, 1999 at 11:10:18PM +0100, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> 
> The derivate-question itself has much more interesting examples. For
> example for which of the following examples is A a derivative of B?
> 
> 1) program A, statically linked with a library B
> 2) program A, dynamically linker with a library B
> 3) program A, only using header-files from library B

Yes for these three. The type of linking is irrelevant.

> 4) program A, which can load library B on demand

If it did not include any source before: No. If it included header files or
anything: Yes.

If it just can load shared object code on demand, and do something useful
with it, No. (take objdump for example).

> 5) program A, which cannot run without having package B installed
> 6) program A, which can only be installed using package B
> 7) manual A, which documents the behaviour of package B
> 8) program A, which is a wrapper for program B
> 9) program A, which runs program B to do implement some of its
>    functionality

No to all of them.

5) Many perl scripts can't run without perl :) Ditto for any scripting
language. Many programs use "cp", "awk", or similar.

6) Erh, dpkg as package B, and any non-free package as package A?
  (or ar/tar as B).

7) How could it be?

8) A wrapper calls another executable. Like you start it in bash.

9) Similar to 8. Running a program is not making it a derivative of the run
program. You don't incorporate any source files. You just call a name, and
rely that the administrator put the correct functionality in this name.

So I think you could really write a proprietary graphical chess board
interfacing with gnuchess over the command line.

Marcus

-- 
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Marcus Brinkmann              GNU    http://www.gnu.org     master.debian.org
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