Re: Question About GNU General Public License

[Isaac]

On 13 Jul 2004 13:42:19 +0200, David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> wrote:
> Alexander Terekhov <terekhov@web.de> writes:
> 
>> David Kastrup wrote:
>> [...]
>> > > > You better clue yourself in about what linking does.  It resolves
>> > > > symbols.
>> > >
>> > > That doesn't change the program.
>> > 
>> > Not the original, but the copy (linked in memory or on disk).  
>> 
>> And Java and MS IL JITs (and installers) also "change"/"resolve" 
>> (at runtime and/or installation time) the bytecode (resolution 
>> of links aside for a moment). Good luck trying to convince a 
>> judge that people using Java and MS CLI are all criminals (MS 
>> doesn't usually authorize creation of derivative works of their 
>> code).
> 
> And you'd claim that the usage licence of those programs allow taking,
> analyzing and distributing the resulting memory image after linking
> with their compiler?  So that, in effect, you would be allowed to use
> this process for generating a symbol table from the library and
> distribute this without restriction?
> 
> Care to quote the passage from their licences that permits this, or
> some court law that states that symbol tables are not considered
> derived works?

Is a symbol table a creative work? 

Isaac