Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!bionet!ames!uhccux!lee
From: lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: The GNU Public License
Message-ID: <4499@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Date: 3 Aug 89 13:42:15 GMT
References: <991@rex.cs.tulane.edu>
Organization: University of Hawaii
Lines: 56

From article <991@rex.cs.tulane.edu>, by kozma@rex.cs.tulane.edu (John Kozma):
>I posted a rather lengthly article in comp.lang.misc, but nobody seems to
>have noticed it.  Hence this follow-up.

I read it with great interest.  Thank you.

>1)  Something is not a "derivative work", as that term is used in the
>    copyright law, just because it incorporates any part of another work.
>    As to the parts copied to the subsequent work, you need to determine
>    whether that constitute fair use of the previous work, and whether the

But in the earlier article, you presented the "fair use" test for
whether something is derivative as a conjecture about what courts might
hold.  Now you're treating it as a fact.  And what is "fair use" anyway,
in the case of an FSF utility, which you can get for free and which is
intended to be modified, used as model code, excerpted, and generally
put to all the purposes we use nice source code for?  Not just compiled
and run.

>    parts copied in fact comprise copyrightable subject matter at all.
>    (Everyone seems to be pretty clear on the fact that the object code
>    produced by a compiler is not a "derivative" or a "compilation" of
>    the compiler, as those terms are used in the copyright law.)

No, I don't think everyone is, and I don't know that they should be.
How do you know that the courts would not uphold the assertion of rights
to object code produced by a compiler, as a derivative work?  Has such a
case arisen?

>...
>    any exclusive rights in that copyright, you must get a signed document
>    from the creator of the derivitive work.  The bottom line is that, to
>    the extent that the GNU license purports to allow the creation of
>    derivative works, and then purports to restrict the rights of the owner
>    of the copyright of those works, its validity is highly questionable.

I don't see how this follows at all.  All that seems to follow is that
if you create a program using GNU tools, that FSF would not have the
right to distribute your program without your permission.  But because
FSF does not have that right, that doesn't mean you do have a
corresponding right, does it?  If they don't give you permission and you
don't give them permission, then no one can distribute -- that's all.

>...      For example, if you use a compiler to produce assembly
>    language, arguably that language is copied from somewhere in the
>    compiler.  But the copyright on the compiler does not extend to the
>    tables of mneumonics for output code, because you can't use the compiler
>    with out copying them.

"Fair use" again.  This seems reasonable to _me_, but who am I? The
position of commercial developers, as I understand it, is that they
would need to _know_ that they have full rights to products created with
FSF tools.  Informed conjecture is not enough.  (An explicit disclaimer
in the copyleft would, I take it, be enough.)

			Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu