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cc-licenses - Re: Copyright of derivative work released under a CC licence

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: Rob Myers <robmyers AT mac.com>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: Copyright of derivative work released under a CC licence
  • Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 22:32:33 +0000

On 2 Dec 2004, at 22:16, Greg London wrote:

If someone developed a functionally equivalent,
but completely independent, version of a piece of code,
I believe it is considered a separate work, regardless
of whether the second author once used the word "derivative"
to describe the work. There is "derivative" as in a strict
legal meaning, and then there is "derivative" as in someone
off the street thinking of derivative.

I think it depends on whether you saw the original code or not. If you didn't, it's a "clean-room" reverse-engineered functional equivalent.

If you did see the code and refer to it during coding, then I don't know how copyright affects that. I agree that the legal idea of a derivative is different to the dictionary definition of a derivative, but I don't know how the law views translations of functionality between computer programming languages, or between environments or toolkits/APIs in the same language.

Groklaw's archives may be able to help here, as the question of what is or isn't a derivative has been one of SCO's main arguments.

- Rob.





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