John Cowan wrote: > But in any case my point is that there is no bright line between > a derivative and a collective work.
If you are looking for a bright line in copyright law, I'll agree that that isn't it. Here again is what you hypothesized: "Bob interweaves his code into Alice's code (as in this hypo), Bob adds code to the end of Alice's procedure, Bob adds new procedures to the end of Alice's module, Bob adds a new module to Alice's module." Consider that all the Bob v. Alice examples you described would be undertaken either for expressive or functional reasons. If for functional reasons, then copyright has nothing to do with it. Bob and Alice can *use* software that they lawfully acquire, and *interoperate* it for functional purposes with other software that they lawfully acquire, to their heart's content. It is my impression that the law in the US and Europe strongly favors such freedom to use and interoperate legally acquired computer software without copyright restraints. But if there is an expressive component to what Bob and Alice have done, that expressive aspect alone is protectable by copyright, and they can prevent the making of copies, derivative works, collective works, or compilations of their own expressions -- again to their heart's content. And they can choose to license those things. That is true regardless of whether what Bob and Alice create is a derivative or a collective work. Copyright law is the same for both. What is different is that some FOSS licenses (such as GPLv2) actually obfuscate even further by their sloppy language that fuzzy-line between derivative and collective works, and leave people confused about what they can and can't do with their legally-acquired software. There isn't a bright line between expressive and functional components either, as my lawyer friends will remind us. They will refer you to the confusing "abstraction-filtration-comparison" tests that are used in the U.S. courts to distinguish functional from expressive content. But at least, when talking about the principles of copyright law, your hypothesized examples ought to focus on the things that Bob and Alice do for *expressive* purposes rather than the things they do merely to allow their software to function together through some technical (or bizarre) form of linking. I'll apply copyright law only when Bob or Alice make their software prettier. /Larry -----Original Message----- From: John Cowan [mailto:co...@mercury.ccil.org] Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2013 6:20 PM To: lro...@rosenlaw.com; license-discuss@opensource.org Subject: Re: [License-discuss] License incompatibility (was Re: Open source license chooser choosealicense.com Lawrence Rosen scripsit: > I would guess that Bob's adding "a bunch of calls to syslog()" into > Alice's work might create a derivative work of Alice's work, but that > wouldn't convert "syslog()" itself a derivative work owned by either > Alice or Bob, even if Bob statically linked it with Alice's program. The GPL provides an exception for things like syslog() anyway; you can link to it without triggering even disputable obligations. > Why are you putting the burden on an over-clever source code compiler > to detect derivative works? Not what I meant. If Alice's code contains the string "foobar" and so does Bob's, a compiler might coalesce the two strings into one, in such a way that the 0x62 in the object file's initialized-data segment could not be unilaterally attributed to either Alice or Bob. But in any case my point is that there is no bright line between a derivative and a collective work. If Bob's work is a derivative of Alice's, then we can construct a sequence of alternate hypos by Bob that lead right up to two separate modules of code, such as this: Bob interweaves his code into Alice's code (as in this hypo), Bob adds code to the end of Alice's procedure, Bob adds new procedures to the end of Alice's module, Bob adds a new module to Alice's module. In all cases, Bob's contributions can be separated from Alice's mechanically, even at the object level (absent coalescence as described above). Yet that fact is not determinative of collective work vs. derivative work. -- I Hope, Sir, that we are not John Cowan mutually Un-friended by this co...@ccil.org Difference which hath happened http://www.ccil.org/~cowan betwixt us. --Thomas Fuller, Appeal of Injured Innocence (1659) _______________________________________________ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss