On May 27, 12:16 pm, Alexander Terekhov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Dave Crossland wrote: > > Public Domain works can be included in > > a copyrighted work, and if modified, the modifications are subject to > > copyright. > > The copyright in a derivative work doesn't cover elements taken from > preexisting work and employed in a derivative work. (It "extends only > to the material contributed by the author of such work, as > distinguished from the preexisting material employed in the work" 17 > USC 103).
Thanks for the reference to what I said :-) > Hence it is absolutely impossible to have a derivative work > based on preexisting public domain material copyright licensed "as a > whole" under GNUtian viral theory of "work based on". Got it now? I got it - have you? :-) The works that are subject to copyright must be licensed "as a whole" under the GPL. The works that are public domain are not subject to copyright. Hence it is absolutely trivial to have a derivative work based on preexisting public domain material copyright licensed under the GPL. Are you a lawyer, btw? > > You have totally misunderstood what "sublicensing" is: It is a legal > > The act of sublicensing is what happens when a licensee becomes a > licensor to some other party by granting some or all of the exclusive > rights that they received as a licensee. AIUI, it is "all," not "some or all." > The thing is that nonexclusive copyright licenses are generally > indivisible as a matter of law (this is referred to as "settled law" in > every source you can find) unless the licensing contract states > otherwise. This means that a nonexclusive license does not carry an > implicit sublicense agreement. With the exception of the MIT License > (which contains a sublicense clause), permissive licenses generally do > not include a sublicense right and instead offer a direct grant of > rights from the original licensor to any recipient of source code > released by him or her under that license. > > Actually, according to the 9th Circuit, exclusive licensees are not > transferable or sublicenseable either unless the licensing contract > states otherwise. See Gardner v. Nike, a case which appears to have > surprised a lot of lawyers at the time: > > http://www.law.berkeley.edu/institutes/bclt/pubs/annrev/exmplrs/csum/... > > Hth. I fail to see how this realtes to programs made up of MIT X11 + GPL code. _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
