debian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
David G. Miller (aka DaveAtFraud) wrote:
Whether it impinges on someone else's rights depends on the licence
(say SCO) grant to those doing the (re)implementation and the rights
(say SCO) actually have. Copyright and a licence to copy are not
quite the same.
Copyright *LAW* is all I care about. IANAL, but based on lots of
reading over at Groklaw, the applicable U.S. copyright law
US law has no standing here, or in Europe....
That's just it. Each country has its own interpretation and
implementation of copyright law which usually complies with
international treaties (at least the law as written complies but that's
a whole different discussion). Contract law, which is what governs
license agreements, may or may not be recognized and, if it is
recognized for traditional contracts, still may not be recognized for
passive software license agreements. One of the reasons companies end
up starting a subsidiary in any country where they do significant
business is so that all of the contracts can be local.
When push comes to shove, only copyright law matters when in comes to
enforcing usage. Copyright law (both in the U.S. and as generally
recognized by most countries) does not recognize a computer program as
being a derivative work just because it links to some other work. The
GPL can define it that way but I don't know of copyright law in any
country that supports that definition.
If, on another hand, I grant you use under the terms of the GPL,
then you are still free to write your software, but if you link your
program with mine (isn't that what the headers are for?), then any
distribution you do must be under the terms of the GPL, and you must
(if asked) produce the source on demand.
And if I distribute my software under a license of my choice and an
end user happens to substitute a GPLed library for the unencumbered
What the user does re my rights is not your concern. However, if the
user violates my rights, that is a concern to me.
And that's all I'm saying. I am just asking that you don't drag me into
it though even if it was my program that the user ran that included your
library. That is between you and the end user as far as I am
concerned. You could try to prevent this via your license but it would
be hard to enforce since the end user may not even be aware of it.
BTW, just as I was wrapping up what I wanted to say in my previous post,
I went back through it and emphasized that I was only talking about U.S.
copyright law when I realized that the specifics I was stating were
probably unique to U.S. law. IANAL but my guess is that the [L]GPL
provisions regarding copying, use and distribution are enforceable as
somewhat unique licensing that is valid under copyright law both here
and elsewhere. I would be very surprised if a viral interpretation of
the linking provisions would be held enforceable, again, here or elsewhere.
Cheers,
Dave
