2006/5/23, David Mattli wrote:
There are two prevaling views of software which I have seen. The view that software is the opposite of hardware, anything which is in binary format and the view that software is executable code. The former view is the most inclusive and the one (in my understanding) held by DD's. The latter is the one held by you. To better understand the former view I recommend you read this article: http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/my_pubs/anarchism.html
I know that article (by Stallman's lawyer). But the question is very easy: any lawyer knows there is a big difference between corpus mysthicum (the artwork/the code) and corpus mechanicum (the carrier/the file). The copyrightable work is only the artwork/the code! Only if *the code* is the same, there is a violation of copyright: you can obtain the same functions with two different languages. Only patents forbid this, because patents forbid to copy an idea. It seems that Debian considers music and images as software: *components* of a software. This is a great error: for example, a free software can use "CC no-derivative" images with any problem, because the code (the software) is under a license and images are under another license. There isn't incompatibility between the licenses because an image is not a software, *it is not a component of the code* (you can write a book under verbatim copying with images under a free license: there isn't any incompatibility). So I don't understand why songs, images. etc. must follow a software definition. I think that any lawyer will belie me. Max
