David Grothe wrote:
At 01:47 PM 8/6/2003 Wednesday, John A. Boyd Jr. wrote:
The whole notion of "derivative" is a little odd in these discussions. Is my X.25, dating back to 1980, a "derivative work" of Linux because it uses an inline function for spin locks? (It doesn't, it uses the LiS abstraction.) Doesn't seem intuitive, does it?
The idea of spin locks doesn't matter for copyright purposes. If your LiS implementation of spin locks uses Linux kernel code in a manner that could be judged as copying, then your LiS implementation is partly derivative of the Linux kernel. It doesn't matter that you are providing an implementation for an older idea; what matters is whether or not you copied from some other licensed work to do so, even if that other work had nothing to do with spin locks primarily.
If it is copying, and it is subject to the terms of the GPL for whatever reason (e.g., because it wasn't limited to copying syscall interface style), then it thus becomes subject to the GPL, if those are the terms of the GPL.
I must admit, however, that I haven't read the GPL or LGPL lately; I'm trying to comment ing more generally here.
-John
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