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Re: Licensing question about the BSD


From: Bruce Lewis
Subject: Re: Licensing question about the BSD
Date: 05 Aug 2005 13:02:25 -0400
User-agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.3

Alexander Terekhov <terekhov@web.de> writes:

> Bruce Lewis wrote:
> [...]
> > Furthermore, software that builds on but does not modify other software
> > could be described by any of the three verbs in "or any other form in
> > which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted."
> 
> Copyright protects software as literary works. Things like "builds on"
> are irrelevant because they don't constitute creation of derivative 
> literary works under copyright law. It's not that hard to grasp, stupid.

Sorry I was so stupid as to read the actual law instead of simply
believing what you say.

You can have software that "builds on" other software but does not
recast, transform or adapt it.  You can have software that "builds on"
other software and does recast, transform or adapt it.  In the latter
case it's a derivative work.

Embedded spell checkers and Game Genie notwithstanding, there is still
plenty of water that courts haven't tested.  I would look at specifics
and not just assume that because the original source code is unmodified,
that there's no derivative work.

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