On Sat, 2007-02-24 at 18:58 +0530, Abhijit Menon-Sen wrote: > BTW, I don't see why static linking "certainly" makes a derivative work. > Surely that must be, again, a question of fact, to be decided based on > copyright law and the nature of what is being linked to what?
yes. but it is rather likely that a court would rule that the work is derivative. > For example, if I write a program that calculates pi and uses printf to > report the result, and I statically link it against glibc (for printf), > it seems ridiculous to claim that my work is a derivative of glibc. The > FSF may want to claim it, but since the GPL defers to copyright law in > defining what constitutes a derived work, as you said, their opinion > doesn't matter. in the case of glibc, the copyright is with the FSF, so their opinion of what their licence means does matter, as an expression of intent. but anyway, your printpi program is clearly derivative of printf, which is only available in glibc. if this was a book rather than a program, you could stretch the "fair use" argument given that printf is a small component of glibc - but it is a pretty large and essential component of printpi. but afaik "fair use" provisions have never been applied to software, though the GPL's wording doesn't exclude this. -rishab
