> Which is what happens when you make a CD with a /copy of/ dpkg and a > /copy of/ get_it.
Yes, but I don't see how that could be anything other than aggregation, and it's very, very clear how we treat aggregation. Copyright law doesn't care what programs do _when_they_run_ because it has no concept of "reference". It is blind to the fact that one program won't run without another. Now, if you copy one work into another, that's a derivative work. Debian, however, doesn't assert a "compilation copyright", so we have nothing to say about what works you put together on the same CD. We can only complain about infringement of individual works, and I don't see that happening here. Postulate for a moment that a dpkg had a license that required programs that called it, using its regular interface, to use the GPL. That would fail #9 of the DFSG. Thanks Bruce