Qt/Embedded

[Eric Jacobs]

On Fri, 17 Nov 2000, David Johnson wrote:
> 
> On Friday 17 November 2000 01:20 am, kmself at ix.netcom.com wrote:
> 
> > The idea is that, if a program is a work, and if (as the courts have
> > held, in Mai v. Peak) a program in memory meets the fixed and tangible
> > requirements of copyright law, and is therefore a copy under copyright
> > law, then a program linked to a library at runtime is a derivative
> work.

I don't see how this follows.

> I've heard this before, but I've always dismissed it as hearsay. I will
> have 
> to look up Mai v Peak. The implications of this are mind-boggling! Does 
> Stephen King have rights to my brain because I've read his books and
> they're 
> now in my memory?

If that is what the license requires, then yes.

Mai v Peak establishes that because a computer program has to be copied
to memory to be used, one can be guilty of copyright infringement merely
by using the work. The court did not seem to cover Section 117 of
Title 17 very thoroughly and it seems to me that similar cases could
argue under 117(a)(1) especially.

Even under the conclusion of Mai v Peak, the effect on the GPL would
be to require users to proliferate "written offers" (or copies of the
source code) and "prominent notices" of modifications (if the program
is modified) throughout their computer's RAM and other temporary
storage locations as they are operating a GPL'd program.

Whether "a program linked to a library at runtime is a derivative
work" is a different question.

IANAL.