Copyright, derivative works, and truly free licensing (Was: Wine license change)

Francois Gouget fgouget at free.fr
Sun Feb 10 15:37:12 CST 2002


On Sun, 10 Feb 2002, Brett Glass wrote:
[...]
> For the same reason that George Harrison was convicted for writing a song
> ("My Sweet Lord") that was similar, but not identical, to one he'd once
> heard, even though he was not conscious of doing any copying.

   Then you must object to the radios broadcasting hundred of thousands
of non-free copyrighted materials on the air. Surely with so many songs
being broadcasted any singer or musician must be at an awfully high risk
of being sued. Especially since we all have been exposed to this
non-free copyrighted material since before birth.
   The only possible conclusion is that most musicians must have lost
their livelihoods and that lawsuits such as the above must abound.


[...]
> (The engineers who implemented the Phoenix BIOS, for example, had never
> even programmed the x86 family of processors before. This was a specific
> requirement; anyone who had written a line of 8088 assembler was rejected
> for the job.)

   I hope you realize that what you are saying is that Wine is illegal
since most contributors have been developping programs on Windows and
have thus all had exposure to the Windows API and headers (similar to
having written 8088 assembly before).


[...]
> J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, was recently sued and
> accused of copying specific elements of other children's books. The
> books she was accused of copying are quite different from hers in most
> respects.

   Again, are you telling us that writers only read their own writings
for fear of being sued? How many suits of these types have occurred?


   Your analogies are not convincing and seem based on annecdotes. I
see them as insufficient to support your sweeping doomsday claims.



--
Francois Gouget         fgouget at free.fr        http://fgouget.free.fr/
     The software said it requires Win95 or better, so I installed Linux.








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