gnu-misc-discuss
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: GPL traitor !


From: Hyman Rosen
Subject: Re: GPL traitor !
Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 16:27:05 -0400
User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.21 (Windows/20090302)

Alan Mackenzie wrote:
Such an extension, standing alone in source code, does not require
permission from the GCC rights holders to be copied and distributed.

Hmm.  The new code contains not just some minor incidental part of the
original, but incorporates the original in its entirety and its essence,
copying all the recognisable and distinct text from it.  And you're
asserting this needs no permission from the copyright owner?  You seem
to be saying that there's no copyright in computer source code.

What original? There is no original anything. Someone has written an
extension, or a new code generator, from scratch. It fits into the
framework of existing code, being written in such a way that the
existing code can invoke it and be invoked by it, but the new code is
just that, new.

There the independent game makers were creating works which "[could] be
reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves" (in
the words of GPL2, with equivalent wording in GPL3).  Neither version of
the GPL asserts any rights like those claimed by the video games makers,
so that legal result has no relevance for the GPL.

You are claiming that an extension written to be part of a GPLed work
must fall under the GPL. They were saying that a game written to be run
on a console fell under the rights of the console developers. It is
exactly the same. It doesn't matter what the GPL says, just as it didn't
matter what the console makers said, unless copying takes place.


reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]