xml-dev - Re: A call for open source DTDs

[John Cowan <cowan@locke.ccil.org>]

Rick Jelliffe wrote:

> One thing you should do to minimize any copyright if you are worried is to
> reformat the source code, and replace all comments with your own. Comments
> and layout both have "originality", which certainly may be copyrighted.

That doesn't help.  Such a document is a derivative work, and the right
to make derivative works is one of the copyright owner's rights.  Unless
you have a public or private license, you may not make derivative works.

Note that a derivative work need not share a single bit with the
original, as in the case of a text translated into another language.
Contrariwise, two photographs of the same subject from the same
viewpoint in the same light may be pixel-for-pixel identical and yet
have entirely separate copyrights.

-- 
John Cowan	http://www.ccil.org/~cowan		cowan@ccil.org
	You tollerday donsk?  N.  You tolkatiff scowegian?  Nn.
	You spigotty anglease?  Nnn.  You phonio saxo?  Nnnn.
		Clear all so!  'Tis a Jute.... (Finnegans Wake 16.5)

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