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Books can have a functional purpose. E.g. if it is a reference manual for a car. If you used the same table of contents for the reference manual, but the conten
by CameronNemo 6y ago
Books can have a functional purpose. E.g. if it is a reference manual for a car. If you used the same table of contents for the reference manual, but the contents were substantially different, would that still be unlicensed copying?
- zucker42 6y agoBooks don't have a functional purpose in the same way as software. With a book, there are many ways to state the exact same fact (and the fact itself is not protected by copyright law). With a program, there's only one way to call a particular function, or to write a function declaration that an existing program can call. The exact text used in a program is relevant to its functional purpose. A more apt analogy in the case of a reference manual is perhaps a competing manual that presented all the same maintenance information with different words, since they would achieve the same functional purpose with different expressive content.