On Tue, May 27, 2003 at 12:22:35PM -0400, Nathanael Nerode wrote: > Anthony DeRobertis said: > > I'm not sure if you're thinking of this when mentioning "public > >domain", but many header files (for example, ones giving simple structs > >and numeric defines) probably have no copyrightable work in them, and > >thus would be essentially in the public domain. So, using those is > >fine, no matter what the copyright notice says. > I was, indeed, thinking of this. :-) > > I point out Lotus v. Borland[0] and note that the commands used by the > >shell script are the same as used by a human, and thus are a method of > >operation, not protected by copyright. > This is an interesting case, the details of which I was not aware. > This case leads to the following test: if you are > accessing a program through an interface which is a "method of > operation", referring to the "means by which a person operates > something", you incur no obligations, because that is not copyrightable. > There are various possible extrapolations from this. > First, any interface which could be used by humans is a "method of > operation". This is essentially all interfaces. Since dynamic linking > involves the copying of small, (usually) uncopyrightable, code segments, > together with the use of an interface, dynamic linking incurs no > obligations, and the FSF's interpretation is quite wrong. This assumes that the FSF's interpretation depends on the claim that dynamic linking creates a derived work. While varies parties have claimed this at one point or another, I have argued that the dynamically linked work is under the purview of the GPL by virtue of the license terms alone, *if* you are distributing the GPL library in question, which is always the case for Debian. There have been many well-constructed arguments here that writing to an interface does not create a derived work, and is not subject to the copyright of the library because the only parts being copied are not copyrightable. However, the advertising materials for a product are not derived works of a software library either, yet there are software licenses that place restrictions on the contents of advertising materials for products containing the software -- *and* we accept such licenses as free. "You have no say in it, it's not a derived work" is a null argument, because as distributors we must accept the terms of a license that *gives* them a say in it. The greater question for Debian, I think, is whether such an interpretation can be regarded as DFSG-compliant. I believe the answer is yes: first, because it is not *merely* the act of co-distribution that triggers this "license contamination", so DFSG 9 does not seem to apply; second, because this interpretation of the GPL's requirements has existed for a long time, and I'm not aware of any formal objections to its DFSG-freeness even though it depended on a definition of "derived work" that varies from country to country, so I don't think it suddenly becomes non-free just because we've shown it isn't copyright law directly that's used to enforce the requirement. There is a certain set of freedoms that we demand from Free Software, some of which are granted to the user by default in copyright law and some of which are not; so long as these core freedoms are preserved, I don't think changes in copyright law or its interpretation should render a license non-free. Granted, this rule of thumb has its limitations -- a change in copyright law that eliminates all use rights by default would certainly affect the landscape -- but I think it applies here. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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