Bas Wijnen <wij...@debian.org> writes: > On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 03:31:19PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
>> The key phrase is "original," not "work." Original work generally >> means, in US copyright law, that there is some creative component or >> content that makes it copyrightable. It's the same phrase used to >> determine whether something is copyrightable in the first place. > Sure, but if you have a program, then that is an original work. > Slamming a new license on it creates a new original work (there is still > creative content in it), which is based on the original "original work". I believe that this is not true based on my reading of that section of the US code because the derivative is not original. In other words, this does not create a *new* original work -- it's simply the same original work, and therefore does not meet the legal definition of derivative. A derivative work has to be, itself, an original work of authorship, at least as I read that section of the code. However, I'm not a lawyer, and certainly the only way to settle the question would be to get an opinion from a legal expert. > You didn't quote anything that said the derivation must itself be an > original work. In fact, the statement that only one original work is > required for making a derivative means that it doesn't need to be, as > far as I can see. I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this. But I'm just a random Debian developer, particularly on this topic; I have no legal expertise and my opinion doesn't matter any more than anyone else's. (In particular, this is neither a technical nor a policy question, so any other administrative hats I wear in Debian are not relevant to this.) I was just curious since the original statement seemed wrong to me, and now I've been convinced to personally concur with Paul. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/> -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87li30wc3y....@windlord.stanford.edu