Re: Derivative Licensing Question

mm0fmf <none@invalid.com> wrote:

Consider the following situation....
 
Someone has published all the source for a project in C on GitHub.
There is no licence statement, just a copyright notice with the date and
author's name.

Under US law, that means the author holds the copyright, and has not
granted anyone else any rights to copies.

If I take the source and clone the functions so they have the same
prototypes but write them in assembler and have the same flow, is this a
derivative work?

If this is more than a hypothetical question, then you should consult
with an attorney.  Reality is, whether it is deravitive will depend
upon the author filing a suit, and a court finding that it is a
derivative.

Or is the assembler version my work to licence how I feel?

Given your senario, the new work is questionable, and it would likely
take a lawsuit to settle the question.