Licensing questions (was: [bug] elf.h incomplete)

[Fedin Pavel]

On 03.05.2012 19:24, Christopher Faylor wrote:
> Right.  I've noticed the incompleteness of elf.h from time to time too but
> extending it would be tedious since you can't just cut/paste from a GPLv*
> file.  Maybe one of the BSDs has something more complete these days?
  By the way, interesting question. It raises up from time to time here 
and there, but noone gives the answer...
  Is there any strict definition of "derived work"?
  The problem is: we have some #define in GPLed code. And i want to make 
some non-GPLed code interoperable. Consequently, i need the same 
#define. Exactly the our case. Of course i could copy-paste the code, 
and it would definitely be "derived work". But what if i don't 
copy-paste this code, but retype it by hands? Still a copy? Well, add 
some more cleanup. Take a piece of paper, write down all names and 
values. Drink lots of whiskey (wine, vodka) to erase own memory ;-) Next 
day take this paper and write own include. Is it still "derived work" ?
  But, after all, we still have only names and values, nothing more, and 
no matter how we made our version. Does "using the same name" 
automatically mean "derived work"? But in this case IMHO this as a 
nonsense. There's even an anecdote about Microsoft having to opensource 
all their stuff because their code uses GPLed "i++" fragment. Well, 
copyright infringement applies here as well, based on the reverse claim. :)
  So - where are limits of "derived work" ? And should this meaning be 
applied to public visible (like includes, APIs, etc) stuff at all ? 
Because if the answer is yes, this effectively forbids existence of 
alternate solutions to anything at all.
  After all, such reimplementations fall into "fair use" category.

  P.S. I would do it and submit a patch, but here at Samsung any code 
submitted upstream requires review and approval, in order to prevent 
classified information leak. This is of course possible, but this would 
be long way for such a trivial thing. You (Cygwin team) would fix it 
yourself faster.

-- 
  Kind regards
  Pavel Fedin
  Expert engineer, Samsung Moscow research center


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