I caveat this by speaking almost entirely based on U.S. law:
On 2/22/07, Abhijit Menon-Sen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi. ...
> 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. >
A clarification: As far as copyright is concerned, you're right -- its most likely _Not_ a derivative work, but would still likely infringe the GPL'ed code. And even a little bit of infringement is still infringement, unless you can argue an exception (e.g., fair use).
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. >
That's crap, at least in regards to software, under the U.S. and Indian law. In other countries, YMMV. Software is a work of authorship, and it is protected under copyright (in the U.S. as a literary work).
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. >
Under the GPL, that appears to be the only requirement. Basically, the GPL diminishes some aspects of the exclusive grant provided under the Copyright Act. It says that if you use a GPL license, you (as the author) are giving up some of your rights to exclude, provided others play along and also agree to release their code under the GPL license. Otherwise, you, as the copyright owner can enforce the full power of your rights under the Copyright Act, and arguably, depending on the situation, under contract. Eben Moglen, the GNU lawyer of the stars, has a pretty good run down as to legal ramifications and/or the status of what GPL really is here: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/enforcing-gpl.html There have been only a handful of cases dealing with GPL issues that I'm aware of -- most of which addressed the GPL issue tangentially. The last case I remember was the 7th Circuit's holding that GPL did not raise antitrust issues in *Wallace v. International Business Machines Corp.,* 7th Cir., No. 06-2454, (11/9/06). Remember folks: Copyright infringement in any capacity only occurs when you're actually copying someone else's work. My big un-lawyerly suggestion would be to simply re-write the code into something that doesn't touch on the GPL'ed code. Carey
