On Wed, Jan 30, 2008 at 01:15:30PM -0500, Lennart Sorensen wrote: > On Wed, Jan 30, 2008 at 07:54:35PM +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote: > > The GPL might only talk about distribution. > > > > But copyright law is not restricted to copying of work. > > > > IANAL, and I don't know abou the laws in other countries, but at least > > in Germany modifications of a copyrighted work require the permission of > > the copyright holder. > > > > It's e.g. a not so uncommon problem that someone wants to modify a 30 or > > 80 years old building, and since the original contract with the > > architect did not grant the owner of the building the rights to modify > > it he needs to ask the architect (or the architect's heirs) who has the > > (nontransferable) copyright on the building for the permission to modify > > the building. [1] > > Germany does seem to be an odd case that really makes it very difficult > to do perfectly reasonable, desirable and sane things. I am not even > sure the GPL necesarily makes sense under German copyright law. I am > not German so I haven't had to deal with it.
http://www.jbb.de/judgment_dc_munich_gpl.pdf http://www.jbb.de/judgment_dc_frankfurt_gpl.pdf > Len Sorensen cu Adrian -- "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days. "Only a promise," Lao Er said. Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
