Legal Aspects of the Information Society. - Free Technology Academy

GNUFDL • 27 Intellectual property: authors' rights and copyright
4.2.4. Transformation right
The transformation of works includes their translation, adaptation and any
other modification by which a different work is created. Should the transformation
be made without authorisation (express or implicit through the collaboration
of the author of the pre-existing work), the Authors' rights of the
rightsholder of the original work shall have been violated.
As we have already noted, the Authors' rights or copyrights in the work resulting
from a transformation correspond to the new author. This author will
nonetheless require authorisation from the author of the pre-existing work
during the entire term of protection of their rights to the original work, to exploit
the results by any means (e.g. directly or by distribution to third parties)
and, especially, through its reproduction, distribution, public communication
or new transformation.
There are certain limits to this right in relation to software, as we will see below.
Transformationrightsandfreesoftware
As we have explained in the section on original works and derivative works,
the model commonly used for the development of free software often implies
the transformation of pre-existing works.
Therefore, free software licences consider the licensing of such transformation
right one of the bases of software freedom. In other words, if a licence does
not grant any transformation rights, it is not a free licence.
While there is significant debate about the scope of a derivative work, it generally
results from a modification of the original work (adding, eliminating
or modifying elements from the prior work) and/or, more arguably, its integration
into a greater work that is based on the component (however, this
depends on its form of integration).
Binary software
For example, binary software is
defined as a transformation of
the source code, and an implementation
of the code for other
hardware/devices.
Derivative works require the authorisation of the rightsholder in the prior
work (express via licence, or implicit through the collaboration of the author),
and a work incorporating pre-existing work without authorisation would infringe
upon the Authors' rights of the owner of the original work, as we will
see below.
Derivative works are a controversial subject with respect to free software, due
to the difficulties in distinguishing between derivative work, collaborative or
joint work and collective or composed work and what authorisations are required
to create a work including third party components, libraries, etc. The
difficulties arise basically in two respects: