Re: FRR package in Debian violates the GPL licence

[Giacomo Tesio <giacomo@tesio.it>]

On 21/03/2019, Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> wrote:
> But as for the substance of your claim, what you are doing here is asserting
> copyright on an interface.  While there has been recent notable case law in
> certain jurisdictions which wrongly supports the notion that interfaces
> contain sufficient creativity to be copyrightable, that is an incredibly
> toxic precedent to set in the Free Software world.

Technically, he is asserting that any text that use substantial
original words defined in another original copyrightable text is a
derivative work of such original text.

To be honest, the form of the text (in C, plain english, or
mechanically translated to an object form for mechanical consumption),
I'd say that it shouldn't change much.

All translations of a book are derivative work of the original, even
if they are ALSO copyright of the translators.

Since compilers are things and do not hold copyright, API or ABI
doesn't change much.



I agree that the course of action you suggest to Paul is correct, but
I'd really like if you might elaborate about your concerns about API
copyrightability.

I know that this is a widely minoritarian position, but I think that a
strong copyleft over innovative APIs might be very beneficial to Free
Software.

Most of commercial APIs are crap so we wouldn't lose much.
OTOH Free Software is strong enough to innovate and through a strong
enough copyleft, we might create a new and better stack that keep most
future software in the Commons, spreading knowledge and collaboration,
for the benefit of the whole Humanity.


So why do you think that this is a "toxic precedent"?


Giacomo