Re: [tlug] Open source license (wikipedia)

[Benjamin Kowarsch <trijezdci@example.com>]

On 23 May 2018 at 10:35, Stephen J. Turnbull <turnbull.stephen.fw@example.com> wrote:

Darren Cook writes:

 > Again, people were saying the the impossibility of reconstructing
 > the original is the key.

I am quite sure that is wrong.  For example, in a highly optimized C
or C++ program you will be unable to reconstruct the original from the
compiled stripped executable (loops may get unrolled, dead code
eliminated, common subexpressions coalesced, etc, and of course with
the symbols stripped you won't be able to reconstruct variable names),
but there is no doubt whatsoever that the original copyright on the
source code persists in that executable.  (If you receive a program as
source code, there is an implied license to compile it for your own
use, but not to copy or redistribute the executable you compiled.)

The copyright on the executable would exist even if it was written directly in machine code (not assembly, but actual machine code).

Although a compiled or assembled computer program is a derivate work of the source code, the conclusions you are drawing are wrong. It seems you are taking the term "reconstructing the original" too literally. If you took a novel and changed all names of people and locations in there, then this would still constitute plagiarism even if the two texts do not match word for word. Likewise if you took out certain minor passages or rewrite those passages so they take up less space, it would still count as plagiarism. Consequently, if you had a collection of analytics of a text that would permit reconstructing the original text in such a way that the reconstruction would constitute plagiarism, then this falls under "reconstructing the original".