The discussion on this topic has been very interesting. I am unsure who posted the
comment about the lawyers at FSF, but if that person could obtain clearance to post
the complete explanation on why FSF has taken the position that the use of inheritance
constitutes the creation of a derivative work, this might be extremely helpful for our
discussion. If this is a reliable legal position, it might discourage use of the GNU
GPL. Hence, this is a rather important matter.
My thoughts on the matter are similar to what seems to be the majority view of the
posts on this list, which is the FSF opinion seems oddly incorrect. I say odd because
it seems inconsistent, as a matter of open source philosophy, to argue that the GPL
permits a copyright holder to grab copyright interest in a modification that
oftentimes (if not, almost always) would not be within the scope of the Copyright Act
(in the U.S.).
First, I think it is important to be mindful of the fact that inheritance is intended
to support the reusability of code, not thwart that effort. If that principle is your
starting point, one could argue that there is an implied license to create derived
classes that contain objects inherited from another. Consequently, one could not say
that all inheritance (if any, for that matter) results in the creation of a derivative
work. You still need to look at the source code in each instance to determine whether
the copying that occurred constitutes an original work. Frankly, I am doubtful that
the creation of a subclass could lead to this result, but the point is, the rule
cannot be a per se determination.
In addition, to implied license to access the inheritance feature of some programming
languages, I think the Copyright Act's definition of "derivative work" as well as
section 117(a) mitigate against a per se rule that the creation of a derived class
results in a derivative work subject to the GPL. Larry and one other poster has
already addressed the derivative work definition in the Copyright Act. As for section
117(a), my understanding is that to the extent that this issue of inheritance can be
viewed similarly to the API issue, the resulting "modification" or "adaptation" would
be outside the scope of copyright protection entirely since the Copyright act
authorizes adaptations that are created as an essential step in the utilization of a
computer program. As a practical matter, I suspect that section 117(a) applies to
nearly all dynamic calls to API, and, depending upon the circumstances, would apply to
some static linking and object inheritance.
I am still curious about the counter arguments. I look forward to the FSF posting.
Rod Dixon
Visiting Prof.
Rutgers Law-Camden
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
creation of a derived class (subclass) constitutes a derivative work of the
On Tuesday 16 October 2001 03:22 pm, Michael Beck wrote:
> I just got a response from FSF lawyers stating that "inheritance is
> considered modifying the library" (see below). My question was related to
> releasing code under LGPL and wanted to make sure that I've interpreted
> correctly the difference between "work based on a library" and "work using
> a library", and according to FSF, inheritance falls under "work based on a
> library" and as such should be released under LGPL.
Now that's a truly scary thought if you think about it. The KDE core
libraries are under the LGPL, but there are many KDE applications that are
under different licenses and which of subclassed some KDE classes (kwin,
kicker, cervisia, etc). Are these programs all now illegal? Will we have
another KDE boycott by Debian and Redhat?
I'm going to have to check that nothing in my C++ inheritance chain is LGPL.
--
David Johnson
___________________
http://www.usermode.org
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