How To Break The GPL
John Cowan
jcowan at reutershealth.com
Fri Mar 3 20:56:06 UTC 2000
"Forrest J. Cavalier III" wrote:
> Says who? If she distributed a derivative work of GPL'ed software,
> then it must be GPL'ed. The question is whether or not Alice has
> a derivative work.
In my first scenario, Alice made a derivative work but didn't distribute
it. She then distributed her own original work to Bob, who made another
distributed work (identical to the first one) but didn't distribute it.
Again I propose the analogy: I mark up my copy of a certain copyrighted
book, correcting certain errors in it. I now mail you *only* the errata
and corrigenda, which you incorporate into your copy. Now we each have a
copy of the same derivative work, but nobody *distributed* the derivative work.
> Someone in this thread suggested that Alice could have used a common
> API and never used GPL software during development. That was NOT
> the theoretical example proposed.
That was my second scenario, just to make things hard if you shot down
my first scenario.
> GCC has a special exception. If it did not have that exception,
> then anything compiled with gcc might be considered a
> derivative work.
I think that exception is primarily to remove FUD; otherwise you are
in the position of saying that a house built according to the plans in
a book is a derivative work of the book.
--
Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis vom dies! || John Cowan <jcowan at reutershealth.com>
Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau, || http://www.reutershealth.com
Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau, || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Und trank die Milch vom Paradies. -- Coleridge (tr. Politzer)
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