From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 21:06:08 GMT
Subject: Re: Licensing and the library version of git
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.63.0607272254370.29667@wbgn013.biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de>
In-Reply-To: <20060727205158.GE13776@pasky.or.cz>

Hi,

On Thu, 27 Jul 2006, Petr Baudis wrote:

> Dear diary, on Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 10:39:55PM CEST, I got a letter
> where Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> said that...
> > >From a standpoint of copyright (which the GPL relies on), this is not 
> > possible: you cannot include C code into Java. And if it is _translated_ 
> > from C into Java, it is not copyrighted any more.
> 
>   now that's a pretty strong statement - did a lawyer tell you that?

<politics>
No. And I hate the fact that more and more people are actually accepting 
the idea of being dictated how they should live by lawyers.

If a law is not clear to a layman, it should not be enforcable.
</politics>

> (Lawyer in what country? Germany?) Because copyrights are generally
> retained over translations, otherwise I could freely publish
> e.g. Czech translation of someone else's English book without any
> permissions and such, which is obviously not the case.

<message="I am not a lawyer... sh1t, I am disgusted by those">
The bigger problem is to _prove_ that it is a translation. It is much 
easier with a 300-page book you translated from English into Czech.

It is almost impossible to prove something was copied if the source 
language is a procedural computer language, and the target language is an 
object-oriented computer language. Given the technical abilities of 
judges, I even doubt that the act of the translation would _not_ be deemed 
a non-literal transformation of the source code (and thus not be a 
copyright case).
</message>

>   There has been actually similar issue with OpenTTD - it was created by
> translating Transport Tycoon Deluxe assembly to C without permission of
> original TTD copyright owner (not that anyone actually knows for sure
> who that is, after series of company mergers and buyouts). I don't think
> anyone consulted a lawyer about legality of that either but I believe
> that most people agree that this is basically illegal (but most likely,
> noone will ever sue, or care at all).

<politics again=true>
Let's be honest: lawyers will only be interested in the money they get. 
They will not care one wit about what is right or wrong: just look in some 
newspaper of your choice. This is a sad fact about our world (but there is 
a remedy: look into the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy).

The consequence is: no lawyer will properly defend the work of open source 
people, since they tend to be poor (well, at least not rich). You just 
cannot make much money by being nice.
</politics>

Ciao,
Dscho