A GPL-enforcement suit against VMware

Posted Mar 12, 2015 18:13 UTC (Thu) by smurf (subscriber, #17840)
In reply to: A GPL-enforcement suit against VMware by butlerm
Parent article: A GPL-enforcement suit against VMware

"No precedent" isn't quite true. Take, for instance, fan fiction. An author may impose arbitrary restrictions on what a fan is allowed to do, which ranges from "nothing, keep off the grass" (Disney) through "don't use my main characters" to "don't do anything I wouldn't do" (McCaffrey's dragons, IIRC; please check before relying on my word).

This issue is far from clear-cut, but that goes for both sides of the argument.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. (Didn't stop me before …)

A GPL-enforcement suit against VMware

Posted Mar 12, 2015 19:33 UTC (Thu) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link] (2 responses)

> Take, for instance, fan fiction. An author may impose arbitrary restrictions on what a fan is allowed to do...

This seems like more of a trademark issue than copyright. The fan fiction isn't (AFAIK--insert standard "not a lawyer" disclaimer here) considered a derivative work, but there are limitations on incorporating another author's original characters and settings into your own stories. However, APIs are mostly determined by technical considerations and compliance with the API is necessary for interoperability. For both of those reasons, the use of APIs would seem to me to be outside the scope of copyright, which is meant to cover creative expression rather than essential functionality. For that matter, interoperability has been used to justify exceptions to copyright in the past when the action would normally be clearly infringing, e.g. including a copy of a company's logo when that was the only way to allow a program to work in a third-party game console.

A GPL-enforcement suit against VMware

Posted Mar 13, 2015 2:03 UTC (Fri) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link]

There is no constraint of API compliance in this case, as VMware wrote it themselves. Designing something like that is creative work and thus falls squarely within copyright.

However, I suspect (but didn't investigate further!) that *this* API is merely a convenience layer which defines an arbitrary boundary between GPL'd and closed-source code.

The kernel is licensed by the GPL and not the LGPL, so this is not sufficient as per the authors' intent. Intent tends to matter to German courts.

A GPL-enforcement suit against VMware

Posted Mar 13, 2015 14:55 UTC (Fri) by enyst (guest, #92308) [Link]

There are arguments why fan fiction can be considered a derivative work. It can be seen as a 'sequel'. Incorporating another author's copyrightable (not stock) characters and continuing a story in the same world seem easily creation of a sequel, provided of course that there's enough used, even if non-literal, and what is used is copyrightable and copyrighted.

OTOH, at least some fan fiction is highly transformative and really doesn't 'borrow' much else than characters, with some of their history and known world settings. This may go to fair use, though.

Anyway, I don't think the fan fiction issues have anything to do with software and interfaces. As you noted, talking about APIs is talking about essential functionality, not arbitrary expression nor creative, fictional events.