From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-06-26 18:15:11
At 07:35 AM 6/26/2003, Matt Hurd wrote:
>"Is my work a derivate work?", I guess is the gist of the question. How
>do you firewall it? Does a contract with a third party need to address
>the boundary of boost code (which maybe modified and embedded or not)
>and the proprietary code.
Serious answers to those questions are way too complex for an email reply.
I'm not qualified in any case. Your best bet is to buy a book on the topic.
Perhaps "Copyright Your Software" by Stephen Fishman. See
http://www.nolo.com/lawstore/products/product.cfm/ObjectID/991DEF76-7EAC-402F-A36984BEADE9DB53
(I haven't read it. I've got an older book, How to Copyright Software" by
MJ Salone, from the same publisher, but it is now out-of-print. It is
available used on Amazon.)
>
>__________
>
>If I have the desire to license source code, which uses boost code, to a
>third party, on the basis that my code may not be redistributed then
>this statement confuses the issue if I am a derivative work.
>
>For example, I build a risk system for an asset manager. I use some
>boost, perhaps modified. I include the license as required... and I get
>confused trying to separate the consequences in a contract with the
>third party. I had one such messy contract that took over a year to
>resolve to mutual agreement :-(
>
>Perhaps this is a non issue as the issue may exist for alternative
>licenses.
I think other licenses have the same problem. I ran into it years before
Boost, and solved it by keeping the open-source code clearly separated from
the proprietary (and actually delivered on separate disks, to emphasize the
difference.) The proprietary code used the open-source code, but was not
derived from the open-source code. Use is one thing, derivation is
another.
>PS: does #include <boost/any_old_header.hpp> make you a derived work?
No. That is use, but not derivation. But if instead of #include, you pasted
in a legally significant portion of <boost/any_old_header.hpp>, that would
make your program a derived work. Note that if you pasted in code from
several sources, your code might become a derived work of each of those
sources.
HTH,
--Beman