Copyright on Collections

[Nick Moffitt]

        So here's something that has irked me for the past year or so
regarding Copyright on software.  The GPL states that it covers
modification and distribution (including copying), but that mere
aggregation is not covered.  The OSD specifically prohibits putting
restrictions on same.

        What, then, about the copyrights on collections?  Couldn't a
distributor easily say that the distribution being put out is a
collection of independently licensed works, and license it in some
restrictive way?  

        There is legal precedent for this, as Rick Moen recently
reminded me, in the Compuserve case against someone who copied the CIS
software library.

-- 
((lambda (x) (list x (list (quote quote) x)))
(quote (lambda (x) (list x (list (quote quote) x)))))
	-- A LISP quine written by Seth David Schoen
+++ath