Brian, > A sage worksheet is no more a derived work of Sage than a jpeg would > be a derived work of Photoshop/GIMP or a .doc file would be a derived > work of MS Office or OpenOffice.
I disagree. A jpeg or .doc file is not source code in any sense of the word, thus the GPL is completely irrelevant (I think we agree on that). But, Sage code *is* source code (written in the same language as Sage itself) and is thus capable of being a derived work. > Not unless actual code is copied from Sage and/or distributed Sage > with the file. Of course, your code is much more useful with Sage > than without it, but just because it can be used with Sage or > developed on top of it does not make it a derived work unless you > ship them together. The FSF asserts that if I develop code that merely links to GPL software (static or dynamic), my code is bound by the GPL. I don't have to modify the GPL software and I don't even have to distribute it. All I have to do is use it by linking to it: >>> LINKING == DERIVED WORK True But, this interpretation is not shared by everyone. Especially the part about dynamic linking, which is how Python and Sage load extension modules. A short history of this issue can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License Cheers, Brian --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
