Synaptics MIT license approved

Graeme Gill graeme2 at argyllcms.com
Thu May 17 10:01:05 PDT 2007


Alan Cox wrote:
> I would talk to a lawyer at that point. One thing that I've found
> repeatedly is that the legal idea of derived works is very different to
> the apparent logic a computing person will apply to it and the caselaw
> they draw on is usually equivalent and not from computing. That makes it
> (annoyingly) a very tricky area for non legal people.

That's not how I see it. Copyright seems pretty straightforward
in this regard. Something's a derived work if it uses other
works in it's composition. One example is:
   work A + work B -> derived work C
[The literary analogy is a collection of poems. The collection
  is a derived work of the poems.]
A lot of computer people seem to then get in a knot trying to
figure out why work B is derived from work A (ie. various theories
about linking, libraries, header files etc.), when of course
it's not.

Graeme Gill.



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