Re: GPL and command-line libraries

[Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu>]

Compare, for example, a painting.  If I make a painting with a 5' by
3' hole in it, that is not derivative of Starry Night.

Even if I paint in complementary art such that if you put SN in there,
it looks nice, that's probably not derivative.  But if I bolt the two
paintings together, and ship copies of the whole thing, then

a) I'm shipping Starry Night, so its copyright holder gets a say.
b) the bolts aren't a creative work
c) This clearly isn't "mere aggregation"

So whether or not it's a derivative work, in the sense of any nation's
copyright laws, doesn't really matter.

-Brian

-- 
Brian Sniffen                                       bts@alum.mit.edu