Re: Question about licensing

[Bruce Perens <bruce@va.debian.org>]

From: Ben Pfaff <pfaffben@msu.edu>
> (1) Programs that use other programs are derivative.

Yes. In general, operating systems come with licenses that allow you to use
their publicly-exported APIs without that use being considered a derived work.
But they make that _choice_ when they license their operating systems.
MS did not choose to rule out third-party applications, becuase they felt
that such applications would improve the market for their operating system.

I'm more concerned about the server-client boundary. These days, you can call
a library that's on another machine just as easily as if it was in your own
address space. Given that the two are functionally equivalent, is it not a bug
that copyright law applies more obviously to one than the other?

	Thanks

	Bruce