My take on this definition is that most statically linked programs include a relocation table and symbol tables which are annotations of the source code.
These annotations are not particularly original, but if you declare that your statically linked program is not an original work of authorship, then it is not protected under copyright law.
That only means it is not separately protected under copyright. The owner of the source code copyright retains control over all copying of the work, including copies that involve mechanical transformation and later copying of that transformation. Otherwise, copyright would not be maintained when a modern digital copier is used to copy an art print, which is clearly not the case. Likewise, printing a document using PostScript does not create a separately copyrighted document even though the raw script "looks" nothing like the WYSIWYG editor window.
I agree with Larry Rosen's view, but confusion in regards to this issue is so rampant that failure to state it explicitly in the license leads to an endless stream of FAQs.
....Roy
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