Well, I didn't understand yesterday that FSF had changed the license on the GCC run-time. So, they seem to have done an end-run around the entire derived work issue, and it doesn't matter how you connect to GCC, pipes, network server, whatever, if you're not GPL compatible you can't use the run-time.
It is still itself a derivative work and is distributed. And then there is the whole issue of linking at the end-user's system with the purpose of circumventing the license. Distribution of instructions that cause that linking is tantamount to distributing the components themselves.
That would only be the case if the module was created by the end-user and never distributed. The module use of the internals makes it a derivative work.
You mean the 6th Circuit Appeals Court Opinion in Lexmark v. Static Control Components? It applies a number of metrics for determining when and how copyright is valid. The particular plugin situation we're discussing is not "locking out competitors", anyway, it's simply asking for a particular rights set in what is most likely a derivative work. But which of these particular metrics do you think locks out an insistence that the plugin provide the rights associated with the GPL?
LLVM/clang will rise if they convince people to both work on it and to actually release their work to others. Otherwise, we get stuck with a bunch of half-proprietary compilers. There is still a lot of work before we have any clue whether they'll get done or not.
It's a system that is there to differentiate between purposely exported symbols for interoperability, and internals which are not providing an interface for interoperability. The fraud comes when a program that doesn't really have the the legal permission to use the internals provides a lie to do so. There isn't anything restricting the provision of a GPL device driver which would be fully compatible and interoperable except some internal intellectual property restriction of the organization providing the driver. So, who is on the side of interoperability here? The party that hides its driver internals and lies about its license, or the party that asks third parties to give rights to others.
I'm still not sure. Asking for a honest representation of your own license is a lot different than asking for a string that represents you have a license from a third party.
A license statement is different from a magic cookie. A magic cookie is in general intended to force the use of some copyrighted or even trademarked element. A license identification doesn't do that, it just is a required accurate identification of the license. None of the existing cases have dealt with such a thing.
I don't think you can connect the Lexmark case with this, the facts are too different. Nothing prevents you from creating a compatible GCC plugin, there are only restrictions that it must be available to others with certain rights. If Lexmark had only required that the cartrige program be under the GPL, there would have been no Lexmark case.
I have not looked at Wine's use of 1) clean-room reverse engineering and 2) fair use under copyright law sufficiently to say it's not derivative of Windows, but it doesn't matter! That's because Microsoft has been compelled to release that infromation in a usable form as part of their consent decrees, and if they brought suit they'd create more anti-trust problems for themselves.
I can't think of why. It's been a pretty clear issue with Linux modules. They have a string identifying their licensing. Some people fraud that string with an embedded null character, but it's still fraud.
SCO wasn't an API case. Long before the SCO case was brought, that API was a US Government standard.
It's not just that the API is duplicated, it is that the duplicate is made to be dynamic linked to the main work. The closest thing we have had to a dynamic linking case was Nintendo v. Goloob Games. That was about the Game Genie plugging between the Nintendo console and the game cartridge. It's not entirely germane to what we're talking about here. Over the 20 years we've been talking about dynamic linking, there's still been no case law.
If Wine is truly reverse-engineered, the source is unpublished information. Not published information such as the GCC source or the Windows programming manual. I suspect that some of Wine is not reverse-engineered but made using a windows programming manual.
At this point we are not in the realm of reverse engineering any longer, but in the fair use defense in copyright law.
And I think we have to wait to see how FSF releases and licenses this interface before we can understand what will be fair use.
The binary BIOS was trade-secret. It's a whole different part of the law. The application of reverse engineering for avoidance of trade secret is known well in law. Trade secret information is unpublished. The same for Samba - it was unpublished information that they reverse-engineered, and they can use the "fair use" defense in copyright law (it's a defense, not an affirmative protection). GCC, on the other hand, would be published. It would even have an ISBN number, as part of some distribution if not on its own. It's not at all clear to me that you can use reverse engineering strictly for avoidance of copyright on published information.
Reverse-engineering is a means to avoid trade-secret protection, not copyright. That's what is different.
If there is a requirement for modules to identify their licensing, as with Linux, it may be that FSF changes their license to require that such identification be accurate, and that the rejection of improper licenses by the software remain intact. This is a sort of anti-DRM. FSF turned copyright on its head, why not DRM too?
There are a couple of problems with what the BSD folks think they have done. First, the BSD license is GPL-compatible, so nobody's going to sue them for infringement. Thus there is no case law to tell us if they are right or not. Second, the fact that libedit has the same binary interface as libreadline and perhaps does something that libreadline does (I haven't tried it) doesn't make it 100% clear that libedit is not derivative of libreadline. Third, if the distributor of proprietary software were to arrange for that software to be linked to libreadline, the distribution of the instructions to make the copy on the end-users system under control of the proprietary software maker is tantamount to the distribution of the copy.
Copyright law, unfortunately, gives us little help in this regard, because it is mostly written before the advent of software. We have to rely on case law, and to a great extent the cases have not yet happened.
Reverse engineering is a means of avoiding trade-secret protection, not copyright. In the case of GCC, it's fully disclosed, and it's not at all clear to me that a document good enough to allow a working plugin would not be derivative.
But I suspect that this is all moot. If FSF puts a plugin mechanism in GCC, they're probably going to modify the license attached to it, too.
I think you need to look at that more carefully. First, it's not a legal statement. It seems to be written by engineers and no counsel is identified. Also, FSF knows better than to make such a statement. Looking at the content of the page, they give the arguments a defendant could make, and the fact that plugins might make it easier to connect proprietary software to GCC, and that they could make the plugin a demarcation between programs if they wanted to. But nothing on the page settles the issue.
That's "derived work" or "derivative work". If it's run-time linked to a GPL work, it's probably a derivative work anyway. The GPL doesn't concern itself with how two programs interact, you're just mistaken about that. It does say that an interactive user interface should be able to emit a statement about the license and where to get the source.
There's a vast difference between the bailout and warrant-less wiretapping. Most people would argue how to best revitalize any economy. The purchase of mortgage-backed securities and equity in troubled companies is one possible step. In contrast, the extra-territorial torture and detention facilities are a much more basic issue - a president who seems to have felt himself above the rule of law.
Now, I might have been happier had they simply let real estate values tank. I like to buy land for use, rather than as a monetary symbol, and would benefit from lower land prices. But a lot of people here would be in much worse financial shape if that happened.
The problem is that you don't back out of a long period of bad economic policy by turning it around immediately. Too many folks lose their shirts if you do that.
All of that said, I'm for re-building mass transit and schools as a means of economic infusion. We need to recover from the automotive era. Whenever I'm in Europe, it just hurts how well their transit systems work compared to U.S. ones, because they didn't let the auto companies buy and dismantle them, and they've kept them up. And you don't need a car there, and that puts many thousands back into people's pockets every year.
No, but can't we at least expect a candidate who will, you know, uphold the Constitution? Since when did that go from "absolute requirement" to "would be nice?"
Yes. Others have pointed out that Obama's pick for Attorney General is not yet in office. I don't know who this "acting assistant" is. I think we have to wait on that question.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I didn't understand yesterday that FSF had changed the license on the GCC run-time. So, they seem to have done an end-run around the entire derived work issue, and it doesn't matter how you connect to GCC, pipes, network server, whatever, if you're not GPL compatible you can't use the run-time.
The GPL is not necessary, only a GPL-compatible license. BSD for example. A license from a third party isn't necessary.
It is still itself a derivative work and is distributed. And then there is the whole issue of linking at the end-user's system with the purpose of circumventing the license. Distribution of instructions that cause that linking is tantamount to distributing the components themselves.
That would only be the case if the module was created by the end-user and never distributed. The module use of the internals makes it a derivative work.
You mean the 6th Circuit Appeals Court Opinion in Lexmark v. Static Control Components? It applies a number of metrics for determining when and how copyright is valid. The particular plugin situation we're discussing is not "locking out competitors", anyway, it's simply asking for a particular rights set in what is most likely a derivative work. But which of these particular metrics do you think locks out an insistence that the plugin provide the rights associated with the GPL?
LLVM/clang will rise if they convince people to both work on it and to actually release their work to others. Otherwise, we get stuck with a bunch of half-proprietary compilers. There is still a lot of work before we have any clue whether they'll get done or not.
It's a system that is there to differentiate between purposely exported symbols for interoperability, and internals which are not providing an interface for interoperability. The fraud comes when a program that doesn't really have the the legal permission to use the internals provides a lie to do so. There isn't anything restricting the provision of a GPL device driver which would be fully compatible and interoperable except some internal intellectual property restriction of the organization providing the driver. So, who is on the side of interoperability here? The party that hides its driver internals and lies about its license, or the party that asks third parties to give rights to others.
I'm still not sure. Asking for a honest representation of your own license is a lot different than asking for a string that represents you have a license from a third party.
It is not in Greg's employers interest for him to push this issue. Remember, they've tried to play fast and loose with the GPL before.
A license statement is different from a magic cookie. A magic cookie is in general intended to force the use of some copyrighted or even trademarked element. A license identification doesn't do that, it just is a required accurate identification of the license. None of the existing cases have dealt with such a thing.
I don't think you can connect the Lexmark case with this, the facts are too different. Nothing prevents you from creating a compatible GCC plugin, there are only restrictions that it must be available to others with certain rights. If Lexmark had only required that the cartrige program be under the GPL, there would have been no Lexmark case.
I have not looked at Wine's use of 1) clean-room reverse engineering and 2) fair use under copyright law sufficiently to say it's not derivative of Windows, but it doesn't matter! That's because Microsoft has been compelled to release that infromation in a usable form as part of their consent decrees, and if they brought suit they'd create more anti-trust problems for themselves.
I can't think of why. It's been a pretty clear issue with Linux modules. They have a string identifying their licensing. Some people fraud that string with an embedded null character, but it's still fraud.
It's not just that the API is duplicated, it is that the duplicate is made to be dynamic linked to the main work. The closest thing we have had to a dynamic linking case was Nintendo v. Goloob Games. That was about the Game Genie plugging between the Nintendo console and the game cartridge. It's not entirely germane to what we're talking about here. Over the 20 years we've been talking about dynamic linking, there's still been no case law.
If Wine is truly reverse-engineered, the source is unpublished information. Not published information such as the GCC source or the Windows programming manual. I suspect that some of Wine is not reverse-engineered but made using a windows programming manual.
At this point we are not in the realm of reverse engineering any longer, but in the fair use defense in copyright law.
And I think we have to wait to see how FSF releases and licenses this interface before we can understand what will be fair use.
Bruce
If there is a requirement for modules to identify their licensing, as with Linux, it may be that FSF changes their license to require that such identification be accurate, and that the rejection of improper licenses by the software remain intact. This is a sort of anti-DRM. FSF turned copyright on its head, why not DRM too?
There are a couple of problems with what the BSD folks think they have done. First, the BSD license is GPL-compatible, so nobody's going to sue them for infringement. Thus there is no case law to tell us if they are right or not. Second, the fact that libedit has the same binary interface as libreadline and perhaps does something that libreadline does (I haven't tried it) doesn't make it 100% clear that libedit is not derivative of libreadline. Third, if the distributor of proprietary software were to arrange for that software to be linked to libreadline, the distribution of the instructions to make the copy on the end-users system under control of the proprietary software maker is tantamount to the distribution of the copy.
Copyright law, unfortunately, gives us little help in this regard, because it is mostly written before the advent of software. We have to rely on case law, and to a great extent the cases have not yet happened.
Reverse engineering is a means of avoiding trade-secret protection, not copyright. In the case of GCC, it's fully disclosed, and it's not at all clear to me that a document good enough to allow a working plugin would not be derivative.
But I suspect that this is all moot. If FSF puts a plugin mechanism in GCC, they're probably going to modify the license attached to it, too.
Bruce
That's "derived work" or "derivative work". If it's run-time linked to a GPL work, it's probably a derivative work anyway. The GPL doesn't concern itself with how two programs interact, you're just mistaken about that. It does say that an interactive user interface should be able to emit a statement about the license and where to get the source.
This is really bad advice. If your plugin is not distributed with the GPL software, it's still a derived work.
Now, I might have been happier had they simply let real estate values tank. I like to buy land for use, rather than as a monetary symbol, and would benefit from lower land prices. But a lot of people here would be in much worse financial shape if that happened.
The problem is that you don't back out of a long period of bad economic policy by turning it around immediately. Too many folks lose their shirts if you do that.
All of that said, I'm for re-building mass transit and schools as a means of economic infusion. We need to recover from the automotive era. Whenever I'm in Europe, it just hurts how well their transit systems work compared to U.S. ones, because they didn't let the auto companies buy and dismantle them, and they've kept them up. And you don't need a car there, and that puts many thousands back into people's pockets every year.
Yes. Others have pointed out that Obama's pick for Attorney General is not yet in office. I don't know who this "acting assistant" is. I think we have to wait on that question.
If you want a president who agrees with you on everything, you'll have to run for the office yourself.