Re: Question about licensing
On 11-Jun-99, 21:39 (CDT), John Hasler <john@dhh.gt.org> wrote:
> Bruce Perens writes:
> > "elaborations" is pretty broad. There's still room for the licensor to
> > state what they consider permissible use in their license.
>
> "Editorial elaborations". I think that is fairly clear. There is likely
> case law defining this.
>
> The licensor can certainly narrow the definition of "derivative work", but
> I see no way she can broaden it.
I suspect that the real problem with this definition, like most
copyright related issues, is that nobody was thinking about software
when it was written, there are few (if any) existing software related
cases, and the judges, laywers, and juries who would be involved in such
as case are unlikely to have any real understanding of the topic.
Is 'system ("dpkg -command arg");' an "editorial elaboration"? If I
write a 10,000 word story that mentions the title of _The Deep Blue
Goodbye_ 8 times, have I created a derivative work? The whole concept
of execution and active reference (by which I mean invocation of an
external or internal subprogram, such as calling a library function) is
totally foreign to the vast majority of copyright experts (jurists and
lawyers).
Steve
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