4 Aug
2009
4 Aug
'09
12:55 p.m.
On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 3:45 PM, Dr Nicholas J
Bailey<n.j.bailey(a)elec.gla.ac.uk> wrote:
On Tuesday 04 Aug 2009 09:10:21 Fons Adriaensen
wrote:
"Derived work" in the context of the GPL is entirely a question of
copyright. If two works have been produced completely independently
-- for example if their authors produced them without being aware of
one another's existence at all -- then I don't think there could be
any basis for considering either of them a derived work of the other.
This could routinely be the case for a LADSPA plugin and host, for
example.
If your interpretation was correct, then I could require Cubase to be
GPL'd by writing a VST plugin for it and publishing it under the GPL.
This would obviously be absurd. In real life, a court faced with a
problem like this would surely have to consider the circumstances of
authorship: is it actually reasonable to describe program A as being
derived from program B, to the extent that the terms of program B's
license must be considered when redistributing program A? That
consideration would surely vary hugely from case to case.
Chris
- Is a program that loads LADSPA plugins (at run
time) a
'derived work' ? Note that anyone can create a 'clean'
version of ladpsa.h, as some people did with the VST
headers.
My understanding is "Yes". If it's linked, it's GPL'd. You can run
a separate
process and communicate through sockets etc, that'd be separate. But AFAIK,
same memory space => derived work.