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Wordsmith paragraph.

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Bradley M. Kuhn 2014-03-20 21:17:07 -04:00 • committed by donaldr3
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compliance-guide.tex
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@ -138,25 +138,29 @@ more complex obligations under the license.\footnote{While, there has been much
Licenses}'s Section on derivative works}{\S~\ref{derivative-works} of
this tutorial}.}
However, in our experience with GPL enforcement, few redistributors'
However, experienced GPL enforcers find that few redistributors'
compliance challenges relate directly to the copyleft provisions; this is
doubly true for most embedders. Instead, the distributions of GPL'd
systems that we encounter typically consist of a full operating system
particularly true for most embedders. Instead, the distributions of GPL'd
systems most often encountered typically consist of a full operating system
including components under the GPL (e.g., Linux, BusyBox) and components
under the LGPL (e.g., the GNU C Library). Sometimes, these programs have
been patched or slightly improved by direct modification of their sources,
resulting unequivocally in a derivative work. Alongside these programs,
companies often distribute fully independent, proprietary programs,
developed from scratch, which are designed to run on the Free Software operating
system but do not combine with, link to, modify, or otherwise derive from
system but do not combine with, link to, modify, derive from, or otherwise
create a combined work with
the GPL'd components.\footnote{However, these programs do often combine
with LGPL'd libraries. This is discussed in detail in \S~\ref{lgpl}.}
In the latter case, where the work is unquestionably a separate work of
creative expression, no derivative work has been created. The tiny
creative expression, no copyleft provisions are invoked.
Admittedly, a tiny
minority of situations which lie outside these two categories, and thus
involve close questions about derivative works, require a highly
do involve close questions about derivative and combined works. Those
situations admittedly do require a highly
fact-dependent analysis and cannot be addressed in a general-purpose
document.
document, anyway.
Most companies accused of violations, however, lack a basic understanding
of how to comply even in the straightforward scenario. This document