> I don't think that this is an issue. If it were, artwork produced > using GIMP would be GPL'ed and for sure, there is lots of art work > on the WWW that that was produced using GIMP and it's not GPL'ed.
It's more like someone using GPL'd clip art in a photo produced with GIMP. > If this were true, documents produced with MS fonts would be the > property of MS and so on and so forth. MS has produced a set of fonts specifically designed for the web, so that users don't have to (illegally) copy around their standard windows fonts. You can't copy the *fonts* but you can copy images produced by those fonts. > Further, the use of a font in a document cannot be seen as a derived > work of the font: You're confusing what derived works are. If a document calls for a given font, and the user must provide that font on their computer, it's not a derived work. If the document contains a *copy* of the font so that the user *doesn't* have to have a copy (this is what the web would have to do), that's a derived work. If the document contains the *results* of using the font (PDF does this), it's not a derived work. In the case of gschem symbols or pcb footprints, the project file contains a *copy* of the symbol/footprint. Thus, it's a derived work. The gerber files, IMHO, don't contain a copy of the footprint (they contain the results of applying that footprint), and an etched board certainly doesn't. I think the fact that you can extract (via cut-n-paste even) the symbol/footprint from the project file and use it elsewhere pretty much shows that it's a derived work. And a more appropriate example (for us) is: The use of Word to create a document doesn't mean the document belongs to Microsoft, but including chapter 4 of one of Asimov's books in your document *does* mean it's owned (in part) by Asimov's estate. Similarly, the use of pcb to create a board doesn't mean the board is limited by pcb's license, but the use of pcb's footprints *does* mean the board file is limited by the footprint's license. > The font never changed. That's actually evidence that it *is* a derived work, if the document contains an unchanged copy of the font.
