licence and authorship question

licence and authorship question

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

If I find a program in C (gpl3) and I adapt it to Emacs Lisp what is the situation regarding authorship/copyright/licence ?

Jean-Christophe Helary
-----------------------------------------------
http://mac4translators.blogspot.com @brandelune

Re: licence and authorship question

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Jean-Christophe Helary <brandelune@gmail.com>
> Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2018 17:57:32 +0900
> 
> If I find a program in C (gpl3) and I adapt it to Emacs Lisp what is the situation regarding authorship/copyright/licence ?

Please elaborate on what you mean by "adapt it to Emacs Lisp".

Re: licence and authorship question

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

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> On Jun 30, 2018, at 20:04, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
>> From: Jean-Christophe Helary <brandelune@gmail.com>
>> Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2018 17:57:32 +0900
>> 
>> If I find a program in C (gpl3) and I adapt it to Emacs Lisp what is the situation regarding authorship/copyright/licence ?
> 
> Please elaborate on what you mean by "adapt it to Emacs Lisp".

It is a single file c source game that you can run from the command line and I would like to rewrite it in elisp.


Jean-Christophe Helary
-----------------------------------------------
http://mac4translators.blogspot.com @brandelune



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Re: licence and authorship question

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Jean-Christophe Helary <brandelune@gmail.com>
> Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2018 20:35:39 +0900
> 
>  If I find a program in C (gpl3) and I adapt it to Emacs Lisp what is the situation regarding
>  authorship/copyright/licence ?
> 
>  Please elaborate on what you mean by "adapt it to Emacs Lisp".
> 
> It is a single file c source game that you can run from the command line and I would like to rewrite it in elisp.

IANAL, but AFAIK rewriting in a completely different programming
language doesn't qualify as "copying", so for all practical purposes
the Lisp code will be yours and yours alone (although referring to the
C implementation as the source of the general idea and the design
would be a Good Thing).

Re: licence and authorship question

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

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> On Jun 30, 2018, at 20:44, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
>> From: Jean-Christophe Helary <brandelune@gmail.com>
>> Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2018 20:35:39 +0900
>> 
>> If I find a program in C (gpl3) and I adapt it to Emacs Lisp what is the situation regarding
>> authorship/copyright/licence ?
>> 
>> Please elaborate on what you mean by "adapt it to Emacs Lisp".
>> 
>> It is a single file c source game that you can run from the command line and I would like to rewrite it in elisp.
> 
> IANAL, but AFAIK rewriting in a completely different programming
> language doesn't qualify as "copying", so for all practical purposes
> the Lisp code will be yours and yours alone (although referring to the
> C implementation as the source of the general idea and the design
> would be a Good Thing).

Thank you. After tweaking a few lines here and there as I've done in the past 12 months, I guess it is time to move to writing a full, even short, program.

Jean-Christophe Helary
-----------------------------------------------
http://mac4translators.blogspot.com @brandelune



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Re: licence and authorship question

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > It is a single file c source game that you can run from the command line and I would like to rewrite it in elisp.

When you translate a program into another language, that is a kind of
modification.  The translation is covered by the copyright on the
original program.  This applies to machine-translation and also to
hand-translation.

If the original program carries a free license, that license gives
permission to translate it.  How you can use and license the
translated program is determined by that license.  If it is the GNU
GPL, the translated program must be covered by the same versions of
the GNU GPL.


If, however, what you mean by "rewrite" is to write a new program from
scratch that does the same job, without translating the code itself,
that is not a modification of the original program.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: licence and authorship question

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

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> On Jul 1, 2018, at 8:15, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
>> It is a single file c source game that you can run from the command line and I would like to rewrite it in elisp.
> 
> When you translate a program into another language, that is a kind of
> modification.  The translation is covered by the copyright on the
> original program.  This applies to machine-translation and also to
> hand-translation.
> 
> If the original program carries a free license, that license gives
> permission to translate it.  How you can use and license the
> translated program is determined by that license.  If it is the GNU
> GPL, the translated program must be covered by the same versions of
> the GNU GPL.
> 
> 
> If, however, what you mean by "rewrite" is to write a new program from
> scratch that does the same job, without translating the code itself,
> that is not a modification of the original program.

Thank you for the clear explanation.

Jean-Christophe Helary
-----------------------------------------------
http://mac4translators.blogspot.com @brandelune



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