RE: Roaring Penguin's view

> Am Mit, 2002-06-12 um 15.28 schrieb Sean C. Farley:
> 
> > "Suppose you derive a product from Microsoft Windows or some other
> > proprietary code. Then you are breaking all kinds of 
> license agreements.
> > Furthermore, proprietary vendors would demand and get the 
> rights to your
> > derived product, leaving you with nothing."
> > 
> > I could develop a proprietary product for Windows without 
> "breaking all
> > kinds of license agreements".  He statement says you WILL 
> be breaking
> > license agreements if you develop a proprietary product.
> 
> He says "derive a product from", not "develop a product for". Subtle
> difference. Of course you can develop proprietary products 
> for Windows.

Ah, now we get to one of the core problems with the GPL.
The difference between "derive a product from" and
"develop a product for" is not defined by the GPL
quite the opposite. However note that regardless of what the
GPL say copyright law is unlikely to let the GPL push the
issue too far. Even the FSF recognize this.

> You can do the same for Linux and even the Hurd. 

True, but mainly because the C library is LGPL:ed and the
syscall interface to the GPL:ed Linux (and presumably also Hurd)
have any exception for mere users of the interface.

Anyway, back to the "derive a product from" and
"develop a product for" problem.

Lets say that a GPL:ed Wordprocessor or whatever have a lot of
import/export filters. Now in order to bring order to chaos an
import/export filter API is defined with some dynamic loadning
mechnism in order to facillitate debugging or whatever.

If I develop import/export filter using the API (or ABI),
am I "deriving a product from" the GPL:ed work or am I
"developing a product for" the GPL:ed work?

Regardless of the case above:
Can you give any resonable definition of "derive a product from"
and "develop a product for" have clear and unambiguous meaning in the
general case.

Futhermore do you agree that "develop a product for" lies beyond
the scope of copyright and thus the GPL can't reach it?
No matter what?