This has been sitting in my "to be dealt with" pile for quite some
time, because I couldn't figure out what to do with it.
"Darryl Green"
I've been trying to educate myself about the law in this area, with some help from Alexander Terekhov. I'm not at all convinced now that there is any derivative work produced by the compilation step
I bet that's open to legal interpretation.
however this seems to make no difference to the result.
Good. The intention of the license wording is to say that even if you consider the compiled code a copy or a derivative work, the requirement to embed a copy of the license doesn't apply to it.
It seems the compiled code is a translation of both works,
I guess you mean the boost code and whatever it's compiled along with. The latter could be nothing: there might only be boost code involved. Anyway, can you cite something authoritative that gives compiled code the status of a "translation" and not a "derivative work"?
agregated (a compilation) in some way then. I think whoever produces the compilation can license it however they like, subject to permission being granted by the authors of the original works to include their work in the compilation.
I think the intent to grant that permission is made sufficiently clear by the license text, don't you?
I don't know if this is sufficiently clearly allowed by the wording of the boost license, though I think "use" must surely allow this for software source libs as there is no other way to "use" them.
There are actually lots of ways to use them, but that is certainly *a* use.
So the final answer is the same
good.
but some of the questions and answers in between may be wrong.
I don't know what _that_ means.
Have you received any feedback from lawyers about this?
What is "this"? The question of whether compiled code is derivative or a copy or a translation? The lawyers didn't bat an eyelash about it when the wording was drafted. I'm Bcc'ing them on this message so they can bat whatever they want. -- Dave Abrahams Boost Consulting www.boost-consulting.com