On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 18:21:52 -0500, Brian Thomas Sniffen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > "Michael K. Edwards" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: [snip] > > As is the creation of a critical essay on libc. But that's not a > > derivative work either. > > But an annotated edition of libc is. A program seems far more similar > to an annotated edition than to a critical essay -- since it includes > a copy of the library, after all, and pointers into it.
A creatively human-annotated edition of the libc source code is certainly a derivative work if the source code has any expressive content at all (which I, NAL, think a court would certainly rule that it does). A creatively annotated edition of its header files may or may not be, to the extent that it can be defended as having used those header files entirely according to their functional aspect. A program that uses a libc binary through its published functional interface isn't, no matter what mechanical details of compiling against header files, linking statically or dynamically, etc. may be involved. At most it creates an uncopyrightable combination of the two. Copyright law protects expression, not function. It isn't even really the right tool to protect a software publisher's ownership right in binaries, which is one reason why most commercial software tries to force you to accept a license in order to use it. But even to the extent that binaries are copyrightable, and that copying and using a binary of libc requires a license under copyright, that's about libc itself and not a derivative work of libc. Cheers, - Michael
