MS Office on Linux 14754

Philip Callan

There you go letting your prejudices and ignorance run away with your atbreastude, Phil. You are a comical fellow!

Code isn't subject to copyright just because it is included in somebody's program source. Copyrights only treat works as a whole and only then when they are "unique expressions fixed in a medium" as the law describes. Code fragments, if they do a complete enough job, can be claimed as a sort of whole work, I believe, but you would have to go to some lengths to prove that. Furthermore, you would have to really work to show that much of the code that is in the GPL is actually a "unique expression". You cannot copyright a method or overall idea and much if not all of the code in a typical project is simply straightforward and methodical implementation of an overall program architectural idea.

If I take the source and change the appearance by renaming variables and rearranging the order of things and even adding or removing portions to suit a different purpose, I have met the tests for copyright avoidance. My product is thus "inspired" by the previous work, but hardly a violation. Think of it as parody if you want, but it is not unethical or illegal.

If the overall functionality of the program were patented, you cannot do this, but that has never been true of the GPL stuff and if it were you would have to work out something different.