On Sun, Dec 25, 2011, at 10:22 AM, Ben Tilly wrote: > The real question is not what the GPLv3 does or > does not allow, it is what copyright does or does > not allow. If a work is derived under copyright > law from a GPLed piece of work, then it must be GPLed. > If a work is *not* derived under copyright law > from a GPLed piece of work, the GPL is going to > have trouble restricting it. If you write any > other copyright license, you'll run into the same issue.
Thank you kindly for your response. My question involves 3 works, not 2. We have a original work O, a "derived" work D (O + a shim/adapter), and an independent proprietary work P; where D derived from O under copyright law, D relies upon P for its operation, and where P has no substitutes. I am assuming that by copyright law the author of O can restrict the distribution of D. Let's further assume that P has no substitutes, so that its functionality is not available under a license compatible with the GPLv3. So, my question is if the GPLv3 would restrict the distribution of D due to its dependence on this independent and proprietary work P. This is the essence of the WebAPI hack to the GPLv3, you refactor your would-be derived work D into an independent and proprietary work P as well as a shim S, such that the "derived work" is D = O + S is released under the GPLv3 but the functionality "added" to O are effectively useless unless you use it in conjunction with P. This is exactly the case I discussed in my reply to Chris Travers and the shim technique promoted by Sybase's Kleisath [1]. It is my personal view that the GPL would absolutely restrict this since it covers "the whole of the work, and all its parts, regardless of how they are packaged", "all the source code needed to [...] run the object code", and "independent works, which [... are... ] combined". What confuses me and what I'm asking here is why licensing professionals focus on two items that I consider irrelevant: (a) what is the type of linking between D and P? and (b) is D a derived work of P? What we know is that D is derived from O and that D requires P for its operation. Those two facts seem sufficient for my taste. Best, Clark [1] http://iablog.sybase.com/kleisath/index.php/2009/02/how-to-interface-proprietary-code-with-gpl-code/ _______________________________________________ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss