Re: Fwd: Questions regarding licensing issues

[Robert Dewar <dewar at adacore dot com>]

On 11/7/2012 9:44 AM, nkavv@physics.auth.gr wrote:
> Quoting Richard Kenner <kenner@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu>:
>
> > > There are not many lawyers in Greece that deal with open-source licenses.
> >
> > The legal issue here has nothing whatsoever to do with open-source
> > licenses: the exact same issue comes up with proprietary licenses and
> > that, in fact, is where most of the precedents come from.
> >
> > The legal issue is in the definition of a "derived work" and what kind
> > of separation is needed between two programs ("works") to be able to
> > successfully assert that one is not a derived work of the other.
>
> Yes, this is the major issue here.

One principle that can be applied is that if you have a program in
two pieces, then they are independent if either of them can be used
(and is used in practice) with other programs. But if the two pieces
can only work together, that seems part of the same program. I tried
to get this principle established in federal fourt in the Bentley
vs Intergraph trial, but unfortunately it settled 24 hours before
the judge published his opinion.