Re: Eclipse 3.0 Running ILLEGALY on Kaffe
On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 12:21:51 -0500, Brian Thomas Sniffen
<bts@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
[snip]
> So in answer to your direct question: the unlinked binary isn't
> derived from any of them. The complete binary, including its
> libraries, included whichever one Debian shipped it with.
No, it's not a derivative work in a copyright sense at any stage.
That's a phrase with a legal meaning, and combining by any means that
isn't itself a creative act doesn't create one.
The "derivative work" part of copyright was created to prevent people
from ripping off the author and publisher of the original work by a)
plagiarism and b) unauthorized sequels. It can't be used to prevent
chapter-and-verse reference to the work's content, retail bundling of
the work (published according to a valid license) with another work
that critiques it (even if the critical work is useless without the
original), or use of the ideas in the work under the names that the
work gives them -- and courts have mapped these same limits into
software contexts. There are other mechanisms available under
contract law to limit a license to fit the author's intentions more
closely, but the GPL explicitly eschews them.
[snip]
> If it causes even one person to understand that the generation or
> transportation of a copy is what matters, and not technical
> workarounds, I'll consider it useful.
If it causes even one person to examine the legal precedents and form
his or her own judgement about whether the GPL means what it is often
said to mean, I'll consider it useful.
Cheers,
- Michael
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