On Wed, 20 Mar 2019 at 14:00 Paul Jakma <p...@jakma.org> wrote: > On Wed, 20 Mar 2019, David Given wrote:
[...] > > - I *can* use this library in BSD code, and distribute both together > > as an aggregate under the terms of the GPL --- because the BSD > > license conditions are met by the GPL, so by distributing the whole > > under the terms of the GPL I meet both sets of licensing terms, and > > so everything is fine. > > If by "use this library in BSD code" you mean modify and/or extend the > BSD code so it relied on the facilities of the GPL code, then you can > distribute my code under the GPL correct. > I got halfway through responding to this point-by-point until I realised that you're assuming that all usage of someone else's API makes a derived work --- everything you've said follows on logically from that. Okay, here's a thought experiment. I'm writing a gawk script. I'm using the GNU extensions, which only exist in the gawk version of the language. Is my script a derived work of gawk or not? After all: - the script is completely dependent on the gawk APIs (i.e. the published language) - the script relies on implementation details of gawk (i.e. the non-standard extensions to the language) - the script will not work on any other version of gawk - the script requires gawk to be distributed along with it or it won't work
