On 7/26/05, Michael Poole <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: [snip] > A compilation or collective work under US law is not necessarily a > derivative work of any of its components. The GPL's use of > "derivative" and "derived" is fuzzy in this sense, which is one reason > the terms from copyright law are used more often than the GPL's terms.
Almost -- a compilation or collective work is almost _never_ a derivative work of any of its components. The GPL drafter just plain got it wrong in Section 0, and the legal definition in 17 USC 101 (and its parallels in other Berne Convention countries) overrides the GPL's incorrect paraphrase. Extensively discussed on debian-legal in the last few months (disclaimer: only those few d-l participants with actual legal credentials seem to agree with me); you might start at http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/07/msg00336.html . Cheers, - Michael (IANAL, TINLA)
