Re: Psystar's legal reply brief in response to Apple

[Ivan Shmakov]

>>>>> Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com> writes:
>>>>> On 8/9/2010 11:39 AM, Hyman Rosen wrote:

 >> In any case, when dealing with a license, the first question is
 >> always to determine whether a license is required at all for the
 >> activity you wish to perform. If the answer is "no", then the
 >> license need not be examined at all. So even if the GPL had not
 >> qualified its definition of "modify" the result would be the same.

 > This, by the way, is why copying and distributing a program which
 > dynamically links to a GPLed library does not require distributing
 > that program under the GPL; regardless of what the FSF and the GPL
 > may say about dynamic linking, copying and distributing such a
 > program does not infringe any of the exclusive rights granted to the
 > holders of the copyrights on the linked-to library, and therefore the
 > license of the library need never be consulted when distributing the
 > program. (Assume for the purpose of clarity that the library is not
 > distributed with the program, but already exists on the platform
 > where the program will run.)

        From the technical standpoint, dynamic linking may be seen as a
        convenient and fully automated way to create derivative works in
        the computer's virtual memory on the fly at run time.  However,
        as it's fully automated, it should rather be called “mere
        aggregation” (since there's no creativity involved)?

        One more point is that the builder will typically use the
        accompanying .h-files to build the executable, yet again
        creating a derivative work, which copyright should cover.

        IANAL, of course.

PS.  Though morning's coming over here, so I may be slightly (or not so)
        wrong.

-- 
FSF associate member #7257