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From: les@MCS.COM (Leslie Mikesell)
Subject: Re: [O/T 4 cla] Re: GPL and "free" software
Date: 1999/05/10
Message-ID: <7h8aqf$4nm$1@Mercury.mcs.net>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 476445956
References: <7fibd5$jc7$1@news2.tor.accglobal.net>
 <7h2i00$adl$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7h5rf0$i3t$1@Mercury.mcs.net>
 <7h83tf$150$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Organization: /usr/lib/news/organi[sz]ation
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,gnu.misc.discuss
Date: 1999-05-10T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In article <7h83tf$150$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
Robert Dewar  <robert_dewar@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
>In article <7h5rf0$i3t$1@Mercury.mcs.net>,
>  les@MCS.COM (Leslie Mikesell) wrote:
>> Can you suggest a starting point where (a) the parties had not
>> agreed to restrictive licensing terms and (b) the material
>> copied
>> contained only changes to the covered work and none of the
>> original?  Any other type of case would not have much
>> relevance.
>
>I disagree, if one followed the filter-compare-abstract cycle
>with a patch, it is pretty clear that the very first level
>of abstraction (going from the specific text to the abstracted
>meaning) would immediately involve the original work. I don't
>see any way to follow the required FCA methodology that would
>avoid this.

Given that the recipient of the patch already has his own copy
of the original material obtained by other means, I'm not quite
sure why this would be relevant.  The abstract meaning is all
different from the original in any case.  The way you represent
'copy the original' in a patch file is to omit any mention
of it.

>If you can see how the FCA approach would apply in some other
>manner to a patch file, please elucidiate! Certainly if I was
>an expert in such a case, and I was asked to abstract a patch
>file, I would have to see the original file that was being
>patched, I can't see any other way to proceed.

I think of a patch as a mechanical abstraction of someone retyping
a set of changes, equivalent to the author of the changes dictating
the keystrokes to you to reproduce his modifications.  Yes there
is some relationship to the original work, but at the patch/modification
level that relationship is just an interface to anchor the position
of the changes.  Even where patches contain substantial portions
of the original work, the function of those parts is still just
mechanical, as a positioning aid, not as content.  The part being
conveyed is by definition, differences.

Is the orginal modification legal?  Would it be legal for the
author of the modification to come over and retype it for you?
How about dictating the edit commands to you over the phone as you
modify your own copy?  This is exactly the function the patch file
performs.  I don't see how one way of performing these changes
can be treated any differently than the others - they are really
all the same.

  Les Mikesell
    les@mcs.com