Woody wrote:
> At what point do you say that the commerical entity's version is no
> longer a derived work? That's more difficult to say.

That's pretty well-established in USA law. It's a derivative work if you 
copied the original and then changed it. It's not a derivative if you 
started without the original. Even if the two yield the same results.

> If I had no idea how PNG files were read and written, and then after using say a
> GPL program that did this, I came up with completely different algorithms for
> reading and writing in the PNG format. Even though the code is completely
> different is it new?

Yes, if you didn't base it on the code from the GPLed library.  Even if it's 
an instruction-for-instruction duplicate of the code in the GPLed library.
(That's one of the differences between copyrights and patents.)

IANAL.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

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