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Re: What exactly is Derivative ?



"J.H.M. Dassen" <jdassen@wi.leidenuniv.nl> writes:
> quoting http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pragmatic.html:

> :Consider GNU Objective C. NeXT initially wanted to make this front end
> :proprietary; they proposed to release it as .o files, and let users link
> :them with the rest of GCC, thinking this might be a way around the GPL's
> :requirements. But our lawyer said that this would not evade the
> :requirements, that it was not allowed.

Hm, it would be interesting to know the legal reasoning behind that
conclusion.

Section 2 of the GPL seems only to place restrictions on how one can
*distribute* modified programs - as far as I can see it does not
require the modified program to be free as long as it is not
distributed.

2(a) and 2(c) still holds for non-distributed modified programs, but
2(b) which is the one that requires GPLing the modifications
explicitly only talks about distribution.

-- 
Henning Makholm


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