Dear folks,
in http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=377109, Mr. Schilling
claims the following:
In Europe, we have the "Recht auf das wissenschaftliche Kleinzitat"
that allows us to cite other works without asking in case that the
quoted text (or images) is not too big compared to the own "intellectual
creation level".
As USA/Europe have a mutual acceptance of the US-Copyright vs.
Urheberrecht,
this is even legal if the cited author is US citizen.
So the "Recht auf das wissenschaftliche Kleinzitat" allows a European
author
to "quote" small portions of e.g. GPL code without asking the author for
permissions. The European "Urheberrecht" on the other side forbids a
minor
contributor to govern the license for the project that makes use of the
"Recht auf das wissenschaftliche Kleinzitat".
I'm not sure whether his conclusion is complete. According to
http://www.sakowski.de/skripte/urheber2.html, citing is not allowed to replace
(only to illustrate or backup) own statements of the author. I would therefore
presume that whilst "quoting" GPL code, e.g., in a comment, to illustrate ones
own approach might be OK, using GPL code as a mandatory element in the software
would not be OK. But I am not a lawyer ...
Regards,
Sebastian Wangnick
