On Fri, 21 Dec 2001, Patrik Stridvall wrote: [...]
- a critic's book about the original is not a derived piece
of work. It is clearly specific to the original book but does not
modify it and
clearly does not combine with it to form a single piece of work. (no real equivalent to this one, closest thing would be an application/script that uses another, like a script that
calls 'ls')
This is not all clear IMHO. What a single piece of work is not well defined. Sure a combined work will not be a book since a book normally is something that can be read in linear order and combining with the critisism will not likely form a normal linear book.
However, just because it doesn't combine to something normal doesn't mean that is doesn't combine.
And how does it combine exactly? Both the book and the critic are available independently.
You can still read the book independently from the critic so they are obviously two separate pieces of work, not a single one.
Or how do you define 'combine'?
I do not define combine in any general way. It depend on what my intent is and on the circumstances. I do not expect others to nessarily define combine in the same way either.
However, the problem is that you (or rather the law) must define what combine means for your: "Can't legally distribute, is derived work" to have any meaning.
[...]
From my point of view open-source is not any different from any commercial work. Obviously there are legal means to obtain the original work in both cases (whether you have to pay for it is irrelevant). Otherwise the point is moot.
But saying that open-source is different would mean that because you are not making a direct profit from this work, you are
not entitled to
any protection under copyright law. You can't mean that, can you?
But you _have_ protection from copyright, everybody that
_distribute_ your
work must fullfill the license otherwise you can sue them.
So you agree that gratis, open-source and commercial works are all entitled to the same copyright protection. The last two paragraphs of your email seemed to imply differently to me.
Yes, it is entitled to the _same_ copyright protection.
However since you give away your work gratis to the end user by your free choice, you have the right to stop doing this(1), if anything I sell to the end user bothers you.
(1) Of course you, by your free choice, choose to give the end user the right to redistribute as well so, he can legally give it to his "friends" all other the world, but that is not my problem either.
Note that I not saying that your choice was wrong, but you shouldn't complain that rights that you gave up by _free_ choice have been used against you.
On Fri, 21 Dec 2001, Patrik Stridvall wrote: [...]
However, just because it doesn't combine to something normal doesn't mean that is doesn't combine.
And how does it combine exactly? Both the book and the critic are available independently.
You can still read the book independently from the critic so they are obviously two separate pieces of work, not a single one.
Or how do you define 'combine'?
I do not define combine in any general way. It depend on what my intent is and on the circumstances. I do not expect others to nessarily define combine in the same way either.
I would say that piece of work 1 combines with piece of work 2 if it alters piece of work 1 and results in an entity that a user would consider to be a single piece of work of the same type.
Now I believe this is a more restrictive and reasonable definition of 'combine' and should match general expectations better than your 'everything combines with everything if I decide so' definition.
[...]
So you agree that gratis, open-source and commercial works are all entitled to the same copyright protection. The last two paragraphs of your email seemed to imply differently to me.
Yes, it is entitled to the _same_ copyright protection.
Good. We agree on something! :-)
However since you give away your work gratis to the end user by your free choice, you have the right to stop doing this(1), if anything I sell to the end user bothers you.
Yes, or as the copyright owner I have another alternative: choose a license that restricts what you can do with my work. I can even choose to use multiple licenses and tell you to which one you must abide by depending on how much money you give me. And no matter how much or how little you pay me, you must abide by this license, this at least we agree on, so that's good. And if I say that you must not redistribute work based on mine then you must comply. And basically saying 'take his work and then apply my modifications' still has the same effect: the user magically gets a copy of your work which is clearly based on mine. So the end result is still that you are redistributing a work based on mine which is precisely was forbidden by the license agreement.
-- Francois Gouget fgouget@free.fr http://fgouget.free.fr/ Linux: the choice of a GNU generation