From owner-freebsd-chat Thu Sep 9 12:32: 4 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from europe.std.com (europe.std.com [199.172.62.20]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1F32C14EF6 for ; Thu, 9 Sep 1999 12:32:00 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from lowell@world.std.com) Received: from world.std.com (lowell@world-f.std.com [199.172.62.5]) by europe.std.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA18359 for ; Thu, 9 Sep 1999 15:31:30 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from lowell@localhost) by world.std.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id PAA21202; Thu, 9 Sep 1999 15:31:29 -0400 (EDT) To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Berkeley removes Advertising Clause References: <000001befa71$c3920e10$021d85d1@youwant.to> From: Lowell Gilbert Date: 09 Sep 1999 15:31:29 -0400 In-Reply-To: "David Schwartz"'s message of Wed, 8 Sep 1999 20:16:53 -0700 Message-ID: Lines: 30 X-Mailer: Gnus v5.5/Emacs 20.2 Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org "David Schwartz" writes: > Legally, pretty much the only difference between a derivitave work and the > original work is the person who did the deriviation might have rights to the > derivative work. All you have to do is change every space to two spaces and > you have made a derived work. The rights of the original copyright holder to > the derived work are precisely the same as to the original work. I Am Not A Lawyer, but this is completely wrong. First of all, a quick check of the US Copyright Office showed me that the definition of a derivative work requires an "original work of authorship." It also gave as an example the fact that making spelling corrections wouldn't qualify, but writing a new chapter would. Furthermore, if the original is still in copyright, its owner's permission is needed to create a derivative work in the first place, but (as best I can tell without spending a lot of time on it) the original's owner does not automatically get any rights to the changes, which belong to the person who wrote them. The rights to the original material are unaffected by the creation of the derived work. I don't think this has much impact on whatever the original point was, but copyright is misunderstood enough without propagating further misinformation. Sorry for the interruption; you can go back to your regularly- scheduled open-source license flamefest now. Be well. Lowell To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message