Re: Illustrating JVM bindings
On Tue, Jan 25, 2005 at 01:41:02PM -0800, Michael K. Edwards wrote:
> I'm focusing on a simple case. Pre-existing GPL library, shipped
> unaltered, or with any bug fixes and enhancements contributed
> upstream. New application ("PEOTL") written to use the library.
> Tested and shipped together, with no tricksy business to pretend that
> the application isn't dependent in an engineering sense on the
> library. Intent: to exploit the market for the application, and to
> save on engineering cost by not reinventing the wheel contained in the
> library.
"Written to use the library", in the simple case, with no trickery
involved, means that you are incorporating a modified form of some of
the copyrighted code of that library. In the typical case, this would
be anything covered by copyright that has to be included when compiling
the combined work.
> Simple legal question: can a GPL library author use the copyright
> monopoly to ban the vendor from writing, or the end user from running,
> a closed-source application that uses the library through its
> published interface?
Simplisticly, that depends on on the nature of the published interface.
> Equally simple ethical question: does releasing
> code under the GPL create a commons or a commune?
That depends on perspective, and intent.
> Can one choose to share of and share in a pool of competent solutions
> to well-understood programming problems, without abandoning conventional
> mechanisms for recouping capital investment in novel creations?
In the general case, yes.
In specific cases, there might be specific details that make the
consequences of such choices easier or harder to deal with than in other
specific cases.
In particular, you can't incorporate copyrighted concrete expressions of
those solutions without paying the price set by the copyright holder.
That is, after all, the conventional mechanism for recouping capital
investment in novel creations.
> > I think this falls under fair use. The program in the printer cartridge
> > was tiny, and if Lexmark really wanted copyright protection on that
> > program, they shot themselves in the foot by making its checksum a
> > functional issue.
>
> The interesting part of the ruling, to me, was that the court didn't
> use a "fair use" theory to reach the conclusion they did. The problem
> with "fair use" is precisely that it depends on the circumstances and
> intention of the use; it's an affirmative defense of the behavior, not
> a property of the material being used. So it's pretty easy for a
> copyright holder to get a fresh hearing in court based on a new
> incident of use of the same material.
Ok, ignore the first sentence of that paragraph then.
> The Lexmark court, like the Lotus court, ruled instead that, when
> prima facie copyrightable material is actually necessary for
> functional interoperability, it loses eligibility for copyright
> protection. If this precedent holds, we can stop counting the angels
> dancing atop an exec() boundary.
I don't think this generalization can be made to apply when the only
thing that the copyrightable material is necessary for interoperability
with is the copyrightable material in question.
> GPL. Correctly or not, I understood you to have said that having
> studied a GPL library's internals weakens one's case for being
> justified in writing a non-GPL application that uses it. Copyright
> doesn't and shouldn't work that way. I feel strongly that the ideas
Ah, reading back, I think I see the problem.
I wrote:
< < < < The GPL intentionally removes the freedom to collaborators
< < < < freedoms on collaborative works.
I meant to write something like:
The GPL intentionally removes the freedom to remove collaborators'
rights to access and use collaborative works.
In other words, it's designed to avoid people claiming full ownership and
control over a body of work which they had only partial responsibility
for creating.
That is the kind of freedom the GPL removes, and I don't see that as a
bad thing.
But I think you're talking about the same thing from a different point
of view. You're talking about someone's control over the part they
did write. The GPL doesn't remove their freedom to control that part,
by itself.
--
Raul
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