Fedora Freedom and linux-libre

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Jun 16, 2008, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote:

> Except when the separate parts are identifiable and not derived.

*and* *not* distributed as part of a single work derived from the
 Program.

> No, I just can't ignore what the COPYING file actually says.

And nevertheless you do ;-)

> "If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program ..."

"... when you distribute them as separate works"

that's the same sentence you started quoting, BTW.

Do you dispute that e.g. tg3.c as it stands is part of a single work?

And that it's derived from a (theoretical?  unpublished?) earlier
version of tg3.c that was entirely under the GPL?

(Or, if you don't go for that, that the combination of tg3.c not
entirely under the GPL with third-party code that was present in Linux
before, under the GPL, created a derived work that could only be
distributed in its entirety under the GPL?)

>> If you can identify the separate short stories in an anthology, do you
>> think that somehow means that it isn't a collective work?

> "Collective work" is not a relevant issue.

... because you it would show you may be mistaken?

But, sure, if you want to claim it's not a collective work, fine.
It's clearly a single work.  It's clearly derived from earlier works
that were under the GPL.  What would you claim in defense if you were
sued by any of the Linux copyright holders from back when it was
purely under the GPL?  That the resulting work isn't a derived work?
That it's a mere aggregation of a formerly-separate work with a
derived work from the GPLed code base that hasn't been published as a
separate work for several years, and that would require modifications
to even make sense if you took out the supposedly-still-separate
portions?  Why would you even take the risk of being sued for that?

> who can identify the sections (like maybe the person who put them
> there...) and make a determination if they were "derived from the
> Program".

Do you dispute that tg3.c is derived from (i) earlier versions of
Linux, and (ii) the firmware it contains?

> We already know they are separate, since they get dumped
> into separate hardware.

As in, a movie is not a single work, but rather a mere aggregation of
independent separate works in a single DVD, because the video gets
processed by our eyes whereas the audio is processed by our ears?

And, come to think of it, even the video is a mere aggregation in
itself, because even though it's compressed, it's a mechanical
transformation out of a sequence of clearly separate and independent
pictures.

Right? :-)

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
FSFLA Board Member       ¡Sé Libre! => http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}