[no longer relevant to debian-java, I think]
On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 15:28:57 -0500, Brian Thomas Sniffen
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[snip]
> You are ignoring the
> creative act performed by the programmer who arranged calls to
> functions within libc. That was creative effort on his part which
> critically involves a copy of libc.
As is the creation of a critical essay on libc. But that's not a
derivative work either.
A contract could contain a clause to the effect of: "FooSoft is an
unpublished work of BigSoft, Inc. You may extend it, for use within
your organization, by writing programs that use the unpublished API
contained in foosoft.h and linking against foosoft.a or foosoft.so.
You may not distribute the result outside your organization, with or
without inclusion of material owned by FooSoft, unless you do X, Y,
and Z." This differs from the GPL in two respects: publication status
of the work and its interface, and use of a term of art rather than
status as a derivative work to define the scope of the conditional
license.
If you violate this clause by not doing X, Y, and Z, depending on
whether BigSoft could demonstrate your acceptance of this contract,
they could sue for breach of contract or for copyright infringement.
The breach of contract claim would be based on what you did (link
against foosoft.{a,so}), not on the copyright status of the results.
A breach of contract claim would probably also claim misappropriation
of trade secrets in foosoft.h; but GPL works are published, so you
don't have to cleanroom reverse engineer an API in order to claim that
you didn't breach contract by using the header files in an unapproved
manner.
A suit for copyright infringement would hinge on whether a recipient
who runs your program is infringing BigSoft's copyright, and hence
whether you are liable for contributory infringement. But your
program is not, by itself on paper, a derivative work of FooSoft, and
you were within your rights to run it yourself while developing it, so
a claim of direct infringement just won't wash. (IANAL, etc.) See
Micro Star v. Formgen for a similar scenario.
Cheers,
- Michael
