On April 22, 2002 16:36, Waldo Bastian wrote:
> On Monday 22 April 2002 01:09 pm, George Staikos wrote:
> >    So what if I open OpenSSL as an input file, read it in, then convert
> > it to an executable with f(x) = x, and then execute f(x)?  No different
> > than reading in a text file.  Must all of our input files now be GPL too?
> >  If so, then the GPL is broken and we should consider abandoning it.
>
> It's not the GPL that defines the boundaries of its reach but copyright
> law. And copyright law does not talk about "linking" or "reading textfiles"
> but is based on concepts like "derived work".

  Then the question is this:  Is a program whose behaviour is dictated by the 
input of data at runtime a derived work of that input?

  I would claim no.

  However KSSL does use OpenSSL headers at compile time, so I guess that could 
be seen as derived work.  Neither the OpenSSL licence, nor the GPL forbid 
reverse engineering, so I could always "reverse engineer" OpenSSL to create 
my own OpenSSL compatible headers, and then we would not even need those.  We 
would however be bound to the binary compatibility of that(those) version(s) 
of OpenSSL.

   But why bother? :)




