Re: GPL 2(b) HUH?

[Hyman Rosen]

David Kastrup wrote:
> All the library parts accomplish their intended purpose in the binary,
> and compiling and linking their source transforms them into the binary.

Here is a quote from the Compendium II, which the U.S. Copyright Office
uses as a manual of procedure:

<http://ipmall.info/hosted_resources/CopyrightCompendium/chapter_0300.asp>
    323 Derivative computer programs. A derivative computer program is
    one that is based on or incorporates material from a previously
    published or registered or public domain program that has been revised,
    augmented, abridged, or otherwise modified so that the modifications,
    as a whole, represent an original work of authorship.

The automated transformations involved in going from the source code of a
library to a binary executable are not "an original work of authorship".

> In short: I read and understand your words and explanations, but they
> don't seem to apply at all.

That is because you have an erroneous idea of what it means for a work to
be derivative in the eyes of copyright law. Perhaps it is because you do
not understand that the law sometimes uses English words in a technical
sense such that their conventional dictionary definitions do not apply.
In the everyday sense, one might say that a program which incorporates a
library is derivative of that library, but in the technical sense used by
copyright law, it is not.