[cc-community] GNU-GPL, makefiles, and non-distributed executables

Greg London email at greglondon.com
Fri Dec 14 22:29:43 EST 2007


> Greg London wrote:
>> I think you missed the issue. Alice doesn't distribute a derivative
>> of George's work, and therefore does not trigger the source code
>> requirement.
>
> Does Alices app need Georges code to work?
> In that case, she is making use of it.

"work" and "use" are not covered by copyright.
"derivative" is.

It has been established that the interface to a subroutine call
is purely functional. Therefore if Alice only interfaces to George's
code by calling George's subroutines, it isn't a derivative.

Third party vendors are allowed to make calls to Microsoft's
windows library without getting microsofts permission because
it is a purely functional interface, not a copyright issue.

> Intellectual ninjitsu wouldn't have it any other way.

I don't think you understand the various possible loopholes
that can affect copyright law.

> So if there is a copyright, of any sort, on a cake recipe,

Very bad example because recipes are not copyrightable. Ever.
They are purely functional. You can copyright the text around
a recipe and bundle them up in a book with little stories and
whatnot, and copyright the book, but the cake recipe itself
is uncopyrightable.






More information about the cc-community mailing list