Re: Bug#118427: TP: epo -- Miner mode to reduce the labour to edit code

[Peter S Galbraith <GalbraithP@dfo-mpo.gc.ca>]

Raul Miller wrote:

> Wrong side of the interface.  Of course the implementation of
> buffer-substring is copyrightable.
> 
> However, is the code that calls it copyrightable?  That's essentially
> what you were asking about in the question I was answering.

Here's what I meant:  minor-mode foobar is a copyrighted work
with a license incompatible with the GPL.  It uses a call to
buffer-substring.  The buffer-substring copyright owner could
say:  You can't do that; implement your own buffer-substring.

Of course, it's likely that _any_ minor-mode written for Emacs
has a call to some Emacs internal every second line, and not a
single call to buffer-substring.
 
> I'm not saying anything radical here.

Neither am I.  I'm just wondering where the line is.

Years ago when I satrted coding elisp and wasn't concerned about
licensing issues, I thought I was okay as long as I didn't load
anything via 'require'.  But obviously I was using other people's
copyrighted code way before that.

Peter