Hyman Rosen wrote: > > Alexander Terekhov wrote: > > According to the FSF (the GPL drafter), this copying falls under > > "mere aggregation", Hyman. > > No, you are incorrect. "Mere aggregation" is the placing of > multiple separate programs onto a single medium for convenience > in distribution. It is not the linking together of multiple > components into a single binary file to form a complete program.
Whatever you call a "complete program" is utterly irrelevant, Hyman. In alternative, consider also: http://www.usfca.edu/law/determann/softwarecombinations060403.pdf ------- b) Copyright Misuse By imposing GPL § 2(b) on licensees, copyright owners try to magnify their rights beyond those sanctioned by the Copyright Act in two different ways. First, Section 103 of the Copyright Act allocates ownership rights to authorized derivative works to the author to incentivize further investment in additional creativity.274 In contrast, Section 2(b) of the GPL, requires creators of derivative works to forfeit their exclusion rights and any chance to generate licensing revenue.275 Second, if the term derived work were found to encompass more than derivative works and included, for example, compilations and other forms of software combinations, Section 2(b) of the GPL would seek to prohibit activities that Section 106 of the Copyright has not reserved for copyright owners and thus exponentially increase the impact caused by the first copyright magnifying mechanism.276 Given the fact that copyright misuse is an equitable concept under U.S. law, it is difficult to predict if and how a court would apply this doctrine in the context of the GPL. On one hand, the non-profit status and idealistic goals pursued by the proponents and original adopters of the GPL may sway courts in favor of the GPL. On the other hand, the copyleft policy manifested in the GPL seems a more direct attack on the delicate balance between access and protection in the Copyright Act277 than any other licensing practice that has so far caused courts to find copyright misuse.278 In fact, the intended objective behind Section 2(b) of the GPL is to eliminate the effects of copyright protection for computer programs and generally replace it by the rules of the GPL.279 This flies in the face of the many decisions by U.S. courts that found it necessary to protect economic interests of software copyright owners who pursued proprietary licensing models.280 Also, more and more companies use the GPL for purposes other than idealism. If courts enforce clauses like Section 2(b) of the GPL, they would probably also have to accept it if proprietary software companies start prohibiting combinations of their programs with other software beyond the boundaries of the Copyright Act. This could have potentially significant implications for interoperability. Thus, for purposes of U.S. copyright law, Section 2(b) of the GPL seems to raise significant issues under the doctrine of copyright misuse, particularly, if it were interpreted to cover more than derivative works as defined by the Copyright Act. ------- regards, alexander. -- http://gng.z505.com/index.htm (GNG is a derecursive recursive derecursion which pwns GNU since it can be infinitely looped as GNGNGNGNG...NGNGNG... and can be said backwards too, whereas GNU cannot.) _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
