Is code made from the documentation a derivative work

Question

Ansible is licensed under the GPL 3.0, they provide a wonderful collection of documentation for most every bit of the software. For instance the copy module can be seen on their documentation page:

https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/modules/copy_module.html

and is seen in their source code:

https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/lib/ansible/modules/files/copy.py

The documentation contains ready to use examples:

- name: Copy file with owner and permissions
  copy:
    src: /srv/myfiles/foo.conf
    dest: /etc/foo.conf
    owner: foo
    group: foo
    mode: '0644'

If I were to use it, it would end up looking a lot like the sample:

- name: Copy bar.conf into place
  copy:
    src: bar.conf
    dest: /etc/bar.conf
    owner: bar
    mode: '0644'

I believe my copy task is a derivative of the example from the documentation. Leading me to my first question: Does this mean any use of the copy module, or any ansible module for that matter, would be a derivative of the documentation?

And if it is a derivative of the documentation, does that mean that any ansible playbook would be subject to GPL 3.0 licensing? Due to being a derivative of documentation that is licensed under GPL 3.0?

Answer 1

We can both write a HelloWorld application in the same language and chances are that both programs will look very similar. This does not mean that, if I were to publish mine first, that your version would be derived from mine. Both are independent works, no matter how similar they look.

Copyright law and -judges also recognize the fact that as there become fewer ways to express an idea, the more likely it is that the expressions of the idea will look alike even if they are created independently. This goes even as far that if there is only one way to express an idea, then that expression is not subject to copyright at all.

Your invocation of the ansible copy module would only be a derived work of the documentation if you actually copied an example from the documentation and modified that. If you wrote the invocation yourself and used the documentation only as a reference which parameters you can use, then the code is not a derived work and wholly your own.