Re: Using of parse tree externally

[dewar at gnat dot com (Robert Dewar)]

<<Note that we're not talking about desirable here -- only about
possible.  My wife believes that software can be licensed with the
restriction being discussed, and that such a license could be
enforcable without a signature.  However, I believe she's talking
about a softare usage license by the copyright holder (the FSF),
rather than merely a copyright license.
>>

Right, but the issue is whether a deriviative work exists or not. If it
does not, then of course there is no issue of the copyright holder needing
to license it (or having the power to prevent the creation of this work).
So what your wife is implicitly saying is that she feels that this would
create a deriviative work. I tend to agree (please note that does NOT
mean I think this is necessarily a good thing, that is my estimate of
the likely judgment of a court given case law in this area -- I am not
an attorney, though I have been qualified as an expert witness in software
copyright matters in federal district court several times -- but even if
I were an attorney, it would not make any opinion I offered correct. This
is definitely a gray area, you won't know the law till it is litigated,
and even then unless the litigation goes way up, the law will be blurred.
Even Altai vs Computer Associates is only third circuit law, not the law
of the land, although it is often followed in other circuits. This is a
very murky area :-)

P.S. As a relative newcomer to the list, I worry that this kind of legal
discussion may not be appropriate to what I understood to be a technical
list. On the other hand, Mark Mitchell is an old hand here, so if he
thinks it is OK, I will follow his lead :-) :-)

Robert