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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!metro!metro!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!howland.erols.net!news.nacamar.de!news.apfel.de!news-fra1.dfn.de!news-koe1.dfn.de!main.Germany.EU.net!Dortmund.Germany.EU.net!interface-business.de!usenet From: j@ida.interface-business.de (J Wunsch) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc Subject: Re: GPL Date: 12 Feb 1997 13:06:03 GMT Organization: interface business GmbH, Dresden Lines: 33 Message-ID: <5dsf7r$8bp@innocence.interface-business.de> References: <32DFFEAB.7704@usa.net> <5cmiuu$iud@garuda.synet.net> <5cokgi$alm@web.nmti.com> <L3U8y0gTz/TM091yn@ibm.net> <32F167BB.41C67EA6@freebsd.org> <0rnuc5.3e1.ln@zen> <5cvodo$hme@omega.gmd.de> <5db0q8$1f6i@usenet1y.prodigy.net> <5dd2mc$ad5@omega.gmd.de> <5dqmfu$2hqo@usenet1y.prodigy.net> Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@interface-business.de (Joerg Wunsch) NNTP-Posting-Host: ida.interface-business.de X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.6 X-Phone: +49-351-31809-14 X-Fax: +49-351-3361187 X-PGP-Fingerprint: DC 47 E6 E4 FF A6 E9 8F 93 21 E0 7D F9 12 D6 4E Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.misc:158712 comp.unix.bsd.misc:2514 davidsen@tmr.com (bill davidsen) wrote: > I'm trying to avoid snipping this out of context, but do I > understand that if you buy a book you can add a chapter and > republish it without the permission of the original author? No. However, as i've already stated elsewhere, applying copyright law to software is something (at least here) the copyright law has never been intended for. Copyright law usually judges by some kind of ``artistic value'', not by functionality. So it's likely here that a fundamental wrt. functionality but only three-line patch won't constitute anything remotely falling under copyright law here, while a complete restructuring of some source without changing the least bit on its functionality could likely be considered an entirely new work in sense of the copyright law by a judge here. So basically, to `steal' some piece of code here, it's not unlikely that all you need is to simply restructure its layout (so the appearance of the code and thus its ``artificial value'' has been modified), and then claim your own copyright on it. From the POV of copyright law, this makes sense: if you for example copy (by painting, i mean) a picture of some great painter, you doubtlessly have created a new work by this. Thus, you own the copyright for it. (And as long as you don't claim this being the original work, you can do what you want with it.) All this only proves that copyright law is simply not suitable to protect software. At least here. -- J"org Wunsch Unix support engineer joerg_wunsch@interface-business.de http://www.interface-business.de/~j