Re: PHPNuke license

[Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net>]

Scripsit Steve Langasek <vorlon@netexpress.net>

> Well, note that a lot of other GPL software (including all GNU text/code
> processing tools I'm familiar with) specifically exempts the output from
> being regarded as a derivative work of the processing tool.  For bison,
> gcc and the like, there may be enough originality in the structuring of
> the output to support a copyright claim.

I don't think that "originality in the structuring of the output" can
support a copyright claim. The structuring of the output is not a
function of the compiler author's *expressive* choice (which is what
copyright protects) but a function of his *functional* choice (which
copyright does not protect).

Bison does need an exemption, because the output of bison happens to
be, *verbatim*, a C source file written by bison's authors, with some
machine-generated constant definitions insterted in place of the
dollar sign. That C source does fall under copyright protection.

I'm not sure what the current status of the exemption for GCC is, but
I think it used to be there because the compiler sometimes injects
into the instruction constant code snippets that were hand-coded by
the compiler authors instead of generated by compile-time selection
of individual instruction. Templates for function entry/exit code
would be one example, as would the helper routines in libgcc1, which
are inserted when one uses gcc to *link* one's program. It is probably
not legally clear whether those code snippets are nontrivial enough to
enjoy copyright protection - but the exemption makes it clear that even
in jurisdictions that consider them so, the GCC authors will claim no
copyright on the compiled code for that reason.

-- 
Henning Makholm                    "It's kind of scary. Win a revolution and
                                a bunch of lawyers pop out of the woodwork."