> Now, I, Evil Bill Fence Door, copyright this patch, sell it with
> onerous copy protection, and for $1,000,000 a copy. The license
> that comes with it prohibits re-distribution of the patch. Note
> that I'm *not* re-distributing any GPL-licensed software.
>
>But you _modified_ a GPL licensed work (section 2 of the GNU GPL), and
>now are distributing the modifications to this work. It is completely
>irrelevant what the form of the patch is, your patch does not work
>without the GPLed work, and cannot be used without it so it is a
>deriviate work.
Copyright law defines no such thing as a "deriviate work".
Copyright law and the GPL define a "derivative work", and
this definition has nothing to do with your definition of it.
The GPL Version 2 contains:
>The "Program", below,
>refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program"
>means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law:
>that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it,
>either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another
>language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in
>the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "you".
A derivative work is a work *CONTAINING THE PROGRAM OR A PORTION OF IT*.
Now, most *real* patches, especially context diffs, contain a portion
of the program to be patched. But you can come up with patches
that don't. "diff -e" does a pretty good job if the lines added are
completely new and not modified lines from the original program.
Incidentally, you can apply a diff -e patch to any file with a sufficient
number of lines. I didn't say the result would be useful, but the
GPL definition of "derivative work" says nothing about it being useful.
Gordon L. Burditt
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