Rick Moen <rick@???> wrote:

> OK, please cite me even a single judge's opinion in any copyright case
> that says that linking (e.g., dynamic linker calls to an ELF library)
> automatically creates a derivative work based on the linked code (which
> IIRC is the view expressed in the GPL FAQ).


OK, there's a bit of devil's advocate about this, to tease out some details I'm sure most of us are mostly ignorant about ...

Having looked to see what words they actually used, I can't see how the act of *dynamic* linking could be construed that way.

However, without a lot of work, doesn't the ability to link mean pulling in some sort of interface file and "building in" that file to your code ? Thus you would be incorporating the contents of that file and would have to comply with whatever the licence for that file says - isn't that what the lgpl is about ? And isn't something similar being argued about between Google and Oracle ?
And I suppose that then brings up ... to what extent does reading the interface description and then typing it out (rather than just "cp"ing the file) constitute copying ? On the assumption that function "bar" in library "foo" can only be called one way, then presumably there isn't much scope for creativity when writing the definition that your code building environment needs in order to be able to use function "bar".