Re: Plugins, libraries, licenses and Debian

[bts@alum.mit.edu (Brian T. Sniffen)]

Anthony DeRobertis <asd@suespammers.org> writes:

> On Sun, 2003-12-14 at 15:34, Brian T. Sniffen wrote:
>
>> Right, but since the plugin author clearly intended it to fit with and
>> accompany the host, there's no creativity on the part of the combiner.
>> And we're well back into "argue it in court" territory.
>
> If it isn't creative, it can't be a derivative work either. Both require
> creativity. 

But it *is* creativity on the part of the author of the plugin, since
in addition to saying "I'll write a gaussian blur tool", he said "I'll
write one that works in Emacs!"

For someone to later pair it with Emacs has no creativity, so that
packager hasn't earned a copyright, but the pairing is under copyright
-- that of the original author on the host, that of the plugin
author on the plugin, and that of the plugin author on the combination.

-Brian