Re: comparison of public licenses?

On Wed, Jan 26, 2000, Nate Puri <natepuri[_at_]office.ompages.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Jan 24, 2000, Rod Dixon <rod[_at_]cyberspaces.org> wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, Jan 20, 2000, Nate Puri <natepuri[_at_]office.ompages.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > What is uncertain is the manners in which copyright will render
> > > one or more provisions of the GPL type licenses moot.
> >
> > I have a narrow disagreement with these assertions.
> >
> > While whether the GPL or some of its iterations could be enforced is
> > an open question, the assertion that derivative works are the copyright
> > of the author of the derivative work is dead wrong.
>
> I understand this, but I wasn't clear about the subject matter of what
> programmers are calling 'derivative.' What I hear most commonly from
> them is not who owns a derivative, but what is a derivative, where the
> purported work is not a merging of code (i.e., where the UNIX 'diff'
> files are merged on a line by line basis with a program that 'patches'
> code, but where the program is 'compiled against' a 'lib' or library of
> code, and the resulting compilation is a new work that depends on two
> separate code bases but is not 'based on' them. I would personally
> appreciate if someone could clarify the what is and is not derivative
> in regards to code 'linking.' For example, to complise the Secure Shell
> ("SSH"), one needs RSAREF library, libc, and the compiler gcc. If I
> wrote SSH, B wrote libc, C wrote gcc, and R wrote RSAREF, what is legal
> status of the the binary module named ssh that could not have been
> compile without the other three dependencies?
>
> These are elusive issues for me....

I think you are asking two different questions, but you are definitely on to a pivotal issue regarding the GPLs. I think the GNU GPL sweeps more broadly than how copyright law defines a derivative work... broad enough, infact, to claim your linking modules as part of the open source project. The GPL only excludes programs that are entirely functional, separate, and independent of the open source project...and distributed that way. In my opinion, this is exactly why one could craft a good argument that the GNU GPL has a troubling modification provision under Art. 2. If an open source project were ambitious enough (let's say an Operating System, wink, wink), the GPL would have the effect of allowing the project organizer or original copyright holder implacably acquire copyright interests in the so-called derivative works subsequently created using the "original" source code. This is so because "orginal source code" is a moving target under the GPL.

Even so, I am not terribly concerned just yet. The business model for open source projects is solid and worth supporting.

Rod Dixon, J.D., LL.M.
http://www.cyberspaces.org/
rod[_at_]cyberspaces.org Received on Fri Jan 28 2000 - 03:36:27 GMT