OSL 2.0 and linking of libraries

Roy T. Fielding fielding at apache.org
Thu Apr 1 23:38:23 UTC 2004


> My take on this definition is that most statically linked programs
> include a relocation table and symbol tables which are annotations
> of the source code.
>
> These annotations are not particularly original, but if you declare
> that your statically linked program is not an original work of
> authorship, then it is not protected under copyright law.

That only means it is not separately protected under copyright.
The owner of the source code copyright retains control over all
copying of the work, including copies that involve mechanical
transformation and later copying of that transformation.
Otherwise, copyright would not be maintained when a modern
digital copier is used to copy an art print, which is clearly
not the case.  Likewise, printing a document using PostScript
does not create a separately copyrighted document even though
the raw script "looks" nothing like the WYSIWYG editor window.

I agree with Larry Rosen's view, but confusion in regards to
this issue is so rampant that failure to state it explicitly
in the license leads to an endless stream of FAQs.

....Roy

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