Hey lazy GNUtian dak, why don't you simply read the paper before starting to exibit your stupidity as usual?
------ 2. GPL Terminology and Interpretation a) Works based on the Program The first operative Section of the GPL (Section 0) reads as follows: This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License. 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. Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does. As is common in commercial contracting practice, the first Section of the GPL contains a number of definition and specifications that apply to the document as a whole (e.g., the first sentence and the first ten words of the second sentence define the meaning of the capitalized term Program). Less common, however, are the explanatory notes that the GPL drafters interwove with the legally binding definitions (e.g., the last sentence acknowledges that the conditions in the preceding half-sentence may not always be met in practice). The cause for this anomaly seems to lie in the genesis of the document: it was written by programmers for programmers. In order to make the document useful for non-lawyers (and projects without a budget for legal advice), and to establish the GPL as a standard, the GPL drafters tried to draft it as user-friendly and accessible to programmers as possible. Along these lines, the second sentence of Section 0 defines works based on the Program as the Program itself or any derivative work under copyright law followed by a (not entirely accurate) interpretive explanation regarding what the term derivative works means under copyright law. This explanation, introduced with that is to say, gives an indication of what the GPL drafters thought, hoped or may argue in a dispute, is the meaning of the term derivative works. Section 2 of the GPL contains additional explanations and declarations of intent, which even include collective works, i.e., a term defined by the Copyright Act in contrast to the term derivative work.250 In order to resolve these textinternal contradictions, it would seem appropriate to rely on the operative portion of the definition in Section 0 (which contains the reference to the Copyright Act) and treat the explanatory notes as statements of opinion that have been added for convenience purposes only.251 Accordingly, the GPL would be interpreted to define work based on the Program to mean derivative work as defined by the Copyright Act.252 b) Derived Works The first sentence of Section 2 of the GPL permits modifications to the GPLed program in reference to the defined term work based on the Program. The following sentences of Section 2 contain a number of license conditions and explanations and use a number of other terms to describe the result of modifications besides work based on the Program, including modified files,253 modified program,254 and modified work.255 The critical Subsection (b) refers to any work . . . that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof. Taken out of context, each of these terms seems to go well beyond the statutory definition of derivative works in the Copyright Act, because the statutory definition is not satisfied by every modification or any work that contains any part of another work, or that is derived from any part of another work. As discussed, under the Copyright Act, a combination of code with a GPLed program constitutes a derivative work of the GPLed program only if the combination (i) is sufficiently permanent, (ii) contains significant and creative portions of the GPLed program, (iii) is creative in its own right, and (iv) involves significant and creative internal changes to the GPLed program.256 In context, however, it appears that the drafters of the GPL randomly chose substitutes to the somewhat awkward term work based on the Program and used the substitute terms synonymously to improve the sentence flow and readability. This impression is confirmed throughout the document, which also uses other substitutes, including the derivative or collective works based on the Program257 and derivative works.258 Some of the explanations throughout the GPL as well as the Free Software Foundations FAQ259 and Lesser General Public License260 imply that the drafters of the GPL intended to cover software combinations that would not qualify as derivative works under the Copyright Act according to the test developed in this Article.261 This is primarily evidence of a difference of opinion in the application of copyright lawand does not have to mean that the condition in Section 2(b) of the GPL covers more than derivative works as defined by the Copyright Act. Yet, uncertainties remain given the fact that the explanations appear within the license text. ------ regards, alexander. _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
