Jamie Webb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >>>> A patch is considered a derived work,
>>> Are you sure? > Not absolutely. There appear to be no precedents specifically relating > to diffs. The similar cases that get cited found that third party Duke > Nukem levels are considered derived works, and likewise fan fiction > relating to films and books, even though no part at all of the > original was copied. The argument is that the new works would not have > been possible without the originals, and hence that the 'spirit' of > the original was in some sense derived from. Impressive. I've always thought that copyright covered the literal work, and not its "spirit" or ideas or such. An interesting consequence of this is that parodies are only possible if the parodied part agrees to it. Wow. How did the creative communiteis paint themselves into such a legal corner? And - doesn't this mean that any program developed with Visual Studio and requiring Windows to run, is partial copyright Microsoft? It seems fairly analogous to me. Didn't SCO argue something like this at an early stage in the IBM case? That IBM had taken code that IBM had written for System V (or whatever it was SCO had bought rights to) and ported to Linux? So even if IBM developed it from scratch, it was a derived work, and distributing it against SCOs wishes would be a breach of copyright. (IIRC, this was turned down or dropped fairly early, so I think it's a fair assessment that copyright doesn't go this far. The case was (ended up) as a breach of contract issue, at any rate.) > As for a suit, even were patches not considered derived works, the law > set great store by 'accepted practice' and the actions of the > 'reasonable man'. Posting a patch against a GPLed program to a public > list dedicated to discussing that program would cause most in the > industry to infer that the patch was GPLed, so we can expect a judge > to agree. But, it could be expensive. Of course most would infer that. A lot of people infer that stuff on they find on the internet is theirs to use. I'm not sure public perception defines reality, though. :-) I would hope that users who incorporate such a patch would be in "good faith", and not liable for damages, but I also think that if there is no explicit licensing, the copyright holder could require the patch be removed. (I may be totally off base here, but if not, this could be an argument for the "pull" model rather than "send" -- "pull" would of course get its changes from a repository that includes the licencing information, the "send" is just the patch.) -k -- If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants _______________________________________________ darcs-users mailing list [email protected] http://www.abridgegame.org/mailman/listinfo/darcs-users
