Re: RES: What makes software copyrightable anyway?
(Note, I might come back to some of this later -- I need to
think about whether I want to bother raising some issues, among
other things --, but a few of these I have immediate questions or
comments about.)
On 5/20/05, Michael K. Edwards <m.k.edwards@gmail.com> wrote:
> > There is some question about whether Quagga+Net SNMP+libssl
> > is uncopyrightable.
>
> No, there isn't. There's no "selection and arrangement" creative
> expression there. It's silly to say that some third party could
> obtain a copyright on combining those things and enforce it on the
> Quagga copyright holders themselves. Copyright doesn't protect ideas,
> it protects expression; and this is a "doctrine of merger" instance if
> I ever saw one.
Are you saying I could just as well select, say, libperl, apache, and
mysqld and expect them to be "just as satisfactory' when combined with
Quagga?
Or are you saying that since the authors of Quagga already made
that selection that no one else has to?
> > 1. a. Official or legal permission to do or own a specified thing.
>
> Feeble. Get a real dictionary.
Findlaw's legal dictionary says:
1 a: a right or permission granted by a competent authority (as of
a government or a business) to engage in some business or
occupation, do some act, or engage in some transaction which
would be unlawful without such right or permission
Better?
> The non-GPL license option to MySQL had no relevance to that case
> whatsoever. It was not claimed by Progress Software, it is not
> mentioned in the opinion or in Eben Moglen's affidavit, and as far as
> I can tell the judge may not even have known that existed. Unless you
> have some piece of the court record that I don't yet -- in which case,
> pony up -- this is a lame bit of misdirection.
I'll quote the beginning of point 30 of that affidavit for you:
MySQL AB engages in ``dual licensing.'' This means that it licenses
a version of MySQL to be freely used, copied, modified and
distributed by everyone under the GPL, and also makes versions
of its program that are distributed to particular customers without
the right of free distribution.
I don't have at hand the claims of Progress Software, but Saris
clearly was informed of this issue.
--
Raul
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