Hi.
Here I am again, trying to abuse the goodwill of the legal initiates
lurking on the list with a hypothetical scenario.
1. Suppose someone writes a GPLed POP3 server.
2. Suppose company X, which develops a proprietary program, needs some
of the functionality of a POP3 server.
3. Suppose they take the GPLed POP3 server and modify it substantially
to suit their needs, and modify their program to talk to it.
At this point, their program depends on the modified version of the
GPLed program. It could use some other POP3 server, but that would
also need to be modified in non-trivial, company-specific ways to
serve their purpose.
4. Now suppose they sell their program, together with the modified POP
server.
What are the company's obligations under the GPL?
Now, clearly, their program itself is not a work derived from the GPLed
one. But one popular perception is that the product (i.e. their program
plus the GPLed server) is a work derived from the both their proprietary
one, and the GPLed one; and that the terms of the GPL thus apply to the
whole.
Is that really true?
Someone (who isn't a lawyer) said:
A <<product>> is not a "work of authorship". Copyright is about
"works of authorship" and cannot be used to allow or disallow
behavior based on whether you have <<combined>> two things at an
engineering level to make a product.
And that the combination described above results neither in a derived
work, nor in a copyrightable compilation, but merely in a parcel of
goods; and that since no infringing work has been created, all the
company has to do in order to comply with the GPL is to make their
modified POP server source code available.
Thoughts?
-- ams
