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Message-ID: <20080130181530.GA26259@csclub.uwaterloo.ca>
Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 13:15:30 -0500
From: lsorense@...lub.uwaterloo.ca (Lennart Sorensen)
To: Adrian Bunk <bunk@...nel.org>
Cc: Pavel Roskin <proski@....org>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
Jon Masters <jonathan@...masters.org>,
Rusty Russell <rusty@...tcorp.com.au>,
Giridhar Pemmasani <pgiri@...oo.com>, rms@....org
Subject: Re: ndiswrapper and GPL-only symbols redux
On Wed, Jan 30, 2008 at 07:54:35PM +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> The GPL might only talk about distribution.
>
> But copyright law is not restricted to copying of work.
>
> IANAL, and I don't know abou the laws in other countries, but at least
> in Germany modifications of a copyrighted work require the permission of
> the copyright holder.
>
> It's e.g. a not so uncommon problem that someone wants to modify a 30 or
> 80 years old building, and since the original contract with the
> architect did not grant the owner of the building the rights to modify
> it he needs to ask the architect (or the architect's heirs) who has the
> (nontransferable) copyright on the building for the permission to modify
> the building. [1]
Germany does seem to be an odd case that really makes it very difficult
to do perfectly reasonable, desirable and sane things. I am not even
sure the GPL necesarily makes sense under German copyright law. I am
not German so I haven't had to deal with it.
--
Len Sorensen
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