On Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 01:28:42PM -0500, Michael Poole wrote: > The DFSG supposedly allow users to use Debian-distributed software in > any way they wish. The theme of this thread seems to be that some > people believe run-time linking of an application against a GPLed > library, when there are other implementations of the library API, > makes the application a derivative of the library. No, damnit. A work may or may not be a derivative, and that has got nothing to do with whether it is linked at run-time, at build-time, or not at all. Derivation is an intrinsic property of the work. No quantity of mechanical transformations on the work will affect whether or not it is a derivative (although some may generate *new* objects that are derivatives or aggregates; there are some corner cases where the source is free but the binaries are not). All the business about linking and dependencies are just rules of thumb to help figure out whether something is a derivative. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- |
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