license submission: qmail

[John Cowan]

Matthew C. Weigel wrote:


> People need to be able to distribute at least patches so that fellow
> hackers hacking the same piece of software can experiment, 


Patches are essentially commentary on the original, and as such make
at most fair use of it.  The classic example is the "C Answer Book",
which gives answers to the questions in K&R, and makes no sense
without it -- but is not a derivative work.

Furthermore, it is arguable whether patches are copyrightable,
given the likelihood of a form-content merger: what can be expressed
in only one (natural) way is not, in general, copyrightable.

So if you devise qmail patches, you can pass them to your friends.

 > and people
 > need to be able to distribute binaries of their hacks for people less
 > inclined to compile themselves.

I agree.  But that's not what the OSD says.


-- 
There is / one art             || John Cowan <jcowan at reutershealth.com>
no more / no less              || http://www.reutershealth.com
to do / all things             || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
with art- / lessness           \\ -- Piet Hein