AlmaLinux's response to Red Hat's policy change

Posted Jun 30, 2023 9:30 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796)
In reply to: AlmaLinux's response to Red Hat's policy change by pizza
Parent article: AlmaLinux's response to Red Hat's policy change

You obviously don't read what I write.

The executable can't be a “derived work” of the source code because it does not even qualify as a separate work in the first place. A “work” in the sense of copyright law must have a human author and its production must involve a certain minimum amount of original, bespoke creativity. Neither of these preconditions are satisfied by compiler output, which is produced from the source code by a machine (not a human) following a series of rote instructions (which leave no room for originality). As far as copyright law is concerned, the source code of a work and the corresponding binary code are the same thing. The relationship between the source code and the executable is like that between the printed text of a novel and the text of the same novel converted to Braille.

The sort of “derived work” you're thinking about arises, e.g., if a script writer turns a novel into a motion-picture script, or a translator translates an English novel into French. In both these cases, a human being comes up with a separate (but derived) “work”, presumably expending significant creativity in the process, and this is completely different from what a compiler does with source code.