Re: Reusing GPL code without applying GPL legal in Europe?
Krzysztof Siewicz wrote:
> Arnoud Engelfriet napisa?(a):
> > If you make a valid quote, the license (if any) of the work is
> > completely irrelevant.
>
> Actually, there is jurisprudence in Poland that parties to a contract
> may limit or precise what they consider to be fair use of work. If this
> is really the case, then the GPL could affect the evaluation of a
> licensee's quotations. And yes, I know that the GPL is a license not a
> contract but this is not so very much certain under Polish law.
True, parties can agree to limit certain rights granted by law. But I
can simply refuse to accept the license. I then do not have to care
about whatever the copyright holder wants to set limit on. I'll just
quote and make sure I stay within the legal limits.
This course of action will make it more likely I'll get sued for
copyright infringement, but then my defense will be that I made
a quotation in accordance with fair practice. The license will
not come into it.
> But I don't think that we have to resolve the above here. The point I
> was trying to make is that even if you could quote whatever portions of
> free code as fair use it would still be hard to release the resulting
> programs as proprietary under quotation right. This is because in order
> to do so, the portions would have to be translated to object code and to
> do it without a license in Poland is only possible (1) unless otherwise
> specified in a contract (art. 75) or (2) for purposes of interoperability.
Perhaps in very specific cases, like demonstrating that someone's
GPL'ed source code compiles to very inefficient object code. Then
you need to include the object code so people can compare it to
more efficient alternative code.
But I cannot think of any scenario where you could realistically
claim that you can quote some source code from another program
*in your own program*. It's not about source versus binary, or that
you're just copying small parts, you have to have a good reason to do
it.
Including code in a bug report, showing a kernel construct in a
handbook on Linux kernel programming, ridiculing someone's bad code,
praising very good code, showing the winning Obfuscated-C-Contest entry
in your blog: that's quoting. I just can't think of a similar example
in which you copy&paste code into your own program.
Arnoud
--
Arnoud Engelfriet, Dutch & European patent attorney - Speaking only for myself
Patents, copyright and IPR explained for techies: http://www.iusmentis.com/
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