[License-discuss] License incompatibility (was Re: Open source license chooser choosealicense.com

[Lawrence Rosen]

John Cowan asked:
> But suppose Bob takes Alice's program under the GPL and and 
> adds a bunch of calls to syslog() so that it logs what it is doing
> (and suppose further that this is not a de minimis or merely
> mechanical change).  

Hypotheticals are so easy to answer without committing malpractice. :-)  And
so useless as authority for real cases!

I would guess that Bob's adding "a bunch of calls to syslog()" into Alice's
work might create a derivative work of Alice's work, but that wouldn't
convert "syslog()" itself a derivative work owned by either Alice or Bob,
even if Bob statically linked it with Alice's program.

Why are you putting the burden on an over-clever source code compiler to
detect derivative works? Alice better be able to prove that Bob created a
derivative work by some reasonable legal standard relating to the expressive
content of her work or she may be sanctioned by the court for filing a
frivolous lawsuit.

/Larry



-----Original Message-----
From: John Cowan [mailto:cowan at mercury.ccil.org] 
Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2013 2:05 PM
To: lrosen at rosenlaw.com; license-discuss at opensource.org
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] License incompatibility (was Re: Open source
license chooser choosealicense.com

Lawrence Rosen scripsit:

> Does the distribution of a GPL-licensed work along with those 
> "separate works" convert them into something "not separate" in the 
> copyright sense? Does a staple or a paper clip or a book binding 
> convert separate works to something not separate in the copyright sense?

Plainly not.  But suppose Bob takes Alice's program under the GPL and and
adds a bunch of calls to syslog() so that it logs what it is doing (and
suppose further that this is not a de minimis or merely mechanical change).
Do you then hold that this is not a derivative work either, and therefore
need not be licensed by Bob under the GPL?  After all, it is not as if you
can't trace every single bit in the source code or resulting object code to
Alice or Bob respectively, at least assuming the compiler is not
over-clever.

-- 
"Well, I'm back."  --Sam        John Cowan <cowan at ccil.org>