NVIDIA GPL violation

[Patrick Doyle]

On Mon, 1 May 2000, Ryan S. Dancey wrote:

> From the description given, it seems that NVIDIA used at most a handful of
> lines of code from the middle of someone else's program; that program being
> covered by the GPL.  The author of that code contacted the company and
> informed them that they were violating the GPL and that they needed to
> remedy their breach of contract.

I wish he hadn't said "breach of contract".  :-)  He would be on firmer
ground sticking with copyright law (as we have been discussing lately). 

> I'm assuming that it is the stance of the community that the use of >any<
> GPL'd code is sufficient to create a "derivative work" and thus trigger the
> terms of the license itself.

As you mention, that's not up to the community.  It's up to the courts.
Notice, however, that copyright does not apply to "short phrases", so it
seems to me that there exists a size limit, below which you cannot enforce
a copyright.  IANAL of course.

--
Patrick Doyle
doylep at ecf.toronto.edu