This is the mail archive of the cygwin mailing list for the Cygwin project.


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]
Other format: [Raw text]

Re: Licensing questions


On 03/05/2012 11:38 PM, Fedin Pavel wrote:
On 03.05.2012 19:24, Christopher Faylor wrote:
Right. I've noticed the incompleteness of elf.h from time to time too but
extending it would be tedious since you can't just cut/paste from a GPLv*
file. Maybe one of the BSDs has something more complete these days?
By the way, interesting question. It raises up from time to time here and there, but noone gives the answer...
Is there any strict definition of "derived work"?
The problem is: we have some #define in GPLed code. And i want to make some non-GPLed code interoperable. Consequently, i need the same #define. Exactly the our case. Of course i could copy-paste the code, and it would definitely be "derived work". But what if i don't copy-paste this code, but retype it by hands? Still a copy? Well, add some more cleanup. Take a piece of paper, write down all names and values. Drink lots of whiskey (wine, vodka) to erase own memory ;-) Next day take this paper and write own include. Is it still "derived work" ?
But, after all, we still have only names and values, nothing more, and no matter how we made our version. Does "using the same name" automatically mean "derived work"? But in this case IMHO this as a nonsense. There's even an anecdote about Microsoft having to opensource all their stuff because their code uses GPLed "i++" fragment. Well, copyright infringement applies here as well, based on the reverse claim. :)
Well, according to the EU commission's very recent ruling, at least, you can't copyright APIs, which I would consider this elf stuff to be. IANAL, tho.

Ryan


-- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]