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

Greg London email at greglondon.com
Mon Dec 17 22:51:16 EST 2007


Hurrmmm,

Lawrence Rosen, who served for many years as general
counsel and secretary of the non-profit Open Source
Initiative (OSI), posted this run down of what is
derivative. It's about one page short and to the point:

http://www.rosenlaw.com/lj19.htm

Is linking a derivative? The short version of Rosen's view is:
It depends.

Also, the only court case I could find that actually hinged on
whether or not a work was a derivative was

Progress Software Corporation v. MySQL AB
Civil Action No. 01-11031 PBS
Filed June 15, 2001

which is mentioned on page 9 of this document:
http://www.users.drew.edu/ftrees/dps/Team3_Final.pdf

The accusation was that linking created a derivative.
The problem is the judge didn't rule on that matter.

>Affidavits submitted by the parties' experts raise a
>factual dispute concerning whether the Gemini program
>is a derivative or an independent and separate work
>under GPL P 2. After hearing, MySQL seems to have the
>better argument here, but the matter is one of fair dispute.

Maybe it's because I'm a hardware guy, but to me,
software is just a bunch of widgets, and you can
plug and play into those widgets however you want,
and that's a purely functional process not subject
to copyright.

I would think that should apply to Microsoft as
much as GNU-GPL stuff too. If I have a legal
microsoft driver, I should be able to link
into it and call it from GNU-GPL software.

I also happen to be a dabbler in playing guitar, and
there was a company that used to sell amps by buying
a Fender tube amp, gutting it, rewiring it, and selling
it as their own. I don't see anything wrong with that.
And that's how I see tying things together via linking:
it's a cobbling together of parts that's functional,
not derivative.

I seem to recall asking on the list about a year ago
whether it would be a derivative if I were to create
a movie scene that was synchronized to a proprietary
song. The movie wouldn't include the song. But if you
got my movie clip and you bought the song, you could
play the two together and they would sync. People
would move in time to the music. My question had been
whether my movie clip would be considered a derivative
of the song. And I thought the answer was "no".

Maybe I misremember the answer or people misunderstood
the question, but that would seem to be little different
than linking. Taking two completely works and cobbling
them together.

Apparently, there's some vague legalease hanging around
what exactly is a derivative. No doubt, that will keep
the lawyers happy and employed so they can get paid to
determine "intent", rather than looking at a work,
seeing that the only connection is that you plugged
an address of a subroutine into your executable so you
could call it, and that's a purely functional transformation.

But no.

Oh well. Will have to do some more digging.
If this is all there really is out there about
derivatives and linking and functional connections
between copyrighted works, then the information
out there is woefully inadequate to answer some
of my stranger questions.

Enjoy.




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