Raul Miller wrote:
On 5/9/05, Humberto Massa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
You can't re-state something saying a different thing. GPL#0 says
that "a work based on the Program" is "a derivative work under
copyright law", and then says "that is to say, a work
containing...", which is NOT a re-statement of a "derivative work
under copyright law".
That's another re-statement of what "a work based on the Program"
means.
The GPL just equated the two, before the colon! It states, clearly, that
the "a work based on the program" is "a derivative work under copyright
law", and then, using a colon and the introductory phrase "that is to
say", it states that "a work based on the program" is "a work
containing...". My point is that the second statement is not stating the
same thing, so it can NOT be a re-statement. It must be something else.
Yes and no. The GPL is the authoritative document on whatever it
wants to define and whatever it CAN define (the GPL CANNOT define
what is "a derivative work under copyright law", for instance)...
but IF AND ONLY IF it defines it without ambiguity.
The GPL is not defining what a derivative work under copyright law
means. It's defining what a "work based on the Program" means.
It had equated the two of them in the first part of the phrase.
What the GPL actually does is defining a cat this way: '' a cat is
the animal on the page 3 of the Domestic Pets Handbook, that is to
say, an animal with four legs and whiskers. ''. Does this defines
all animals with four legs and whiskers as being cats?
Not actually. Cats are outside the scope of copyright law.
But cats are not outside the scope of the Domestic Pets Handboook. If
you were not trying to win the argument at all costs, you would see that
my paragraph in quotes, above, has EXACTLY the same grammatical
structure as GPL#0. And the interpretation you are giving to this
disposition of the GPL#0 is exactly the same I am giving for cats. You
*are* saying that every work that "contains the Program or a portion of
it" is a "work based on the Program", as per the GPL. But it's not! Now,
every "derivative work under copyright law" is a "work based on the
Program"... nothing more, nothing less...
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