On Sat, 2007-02-24 at 19:44 +0530, Abhijit Menon-Sen wrote: > Also, since you admit the possibility of a dynamically linked program > not being derived from what it's linked to, are you really saying that > adding -Bstatic while recompiling changes the status of the executable > as a matter of copyright *law*?
i'm pretty sure a court would rule that dynamic linking, or static linking, is a greater indicator of derivation than pure aggregation. it is a question of dependence. if your program couldn't possibly work without program X, and builds upon the feature set of program X, then it is likely to be found derivative of program X regardless of whether or not you distribute it with program X. similarly, if there is no essential connection between your program and program X, distributing it along with program X doesn't make it a derivative work. frankly, this has nothing to do with the GPL. will your program infringe copyright if it is linked (statically or dynamically) to a proprietary library which doesn't provide you with a licence to redistribute derivatives? if so, it is probably also a copyright infringement if you link to a GPL library and don't follow the GPL terms for derivatives. -rishab
