Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> 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."

Thank you for clarifying. The only thing I know about copyright law is never use
any software that requires a license key unless you pay for it (from the
software maker that is). TO keep it simple I just don't use any software that
requires a license key.

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