Re: Corel's apt frontend
On Sun, Oct 31, 1999 at 10:19:30AM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote:
> > The copying that's relevant here is the copying which goes into the
> > production of the cdroms. That's the same whether dpkg is in the same
> > file as corel's front end or a different file.
>
> But that can not possibly be relevant, because it's explicitly
> excluded in the GPL.
Could you be more specific?
My argument is that since the corel front end enhances dpkg it counts
as a derivative work based on dpkg for the purpose of copyright law,
just as editorial notations on a screen play create a derivative work
even though the text of the screen play is in some sense unchanged.
My argument is that courts don't care whether a file has a .o extension,
a .so, or no extension at all -- that they aren't really concerned how
many files make up the program, and that they don't care all that much
about the technical details of which system calls where made or what
address spaces are in use.
So if you're talking about the verbatim copy permission in the GPL
I'm saying that it's irrelevant for this argument because we're not
talking about a verbatim copy but a derivative work.
--
Raul
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