On clarifying

I was searching around for licensing policy on Drupal, specifically, releasing patches and modules from copyright (into public domain). I came across http://drupal.org/licensing/faq#q7 where item seven states "Drupal modules and themes are a derivative work of Drupal" and additionally implies that this is true for all works, hosted by Drupal.org or not. The page gives "thanks to the Software Freedom Law Center" however I was unable to find any position taken by the Center on the issue, on their website http://www.softwarefreedom.org/ or otherwise, and on what basis the claims in the page were made. I have been told that "miles" of discussion has happened on this topic, though with numerous searches from Google and Drupal.org I was unable to locate anything substantial on this quote in particular (as opposed to the GPL in general, for instance).

Modules that Drupal is able to load, written for Drupal or otherwise, do not by that fact alone imply anything about a derivative work. To be linked together, operate in a shared code space, entirely depend on a parent program, etc, has no legal standing as a reason to call something a derivative work. From US statute:

A "derivative work" is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a "derivative work."

Additionally:

In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.

So, an API by itself, or any interface necessary to integrate with another work, any method for carrying out a task, etc, is explicitly incapable of being copyrighted, as this is the sole area of the patent system.
Furthermore, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act expands on software in particular, and explicitly allows the sale of products that may be used to "circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work" that is otherwise protected by the copyright statute.

From what research I have tried to do, no court or law seems to have ruled on this issue in particular, however there are an almost limitless amount of very similar cases on what constitutes a derivative work in general: The court opinion in Lexmark v. Static Control ruled that producing something for the purpose of interoperability does not constitute infringement, and therefore would be exempt from licensing terms. The opinion goes as far to argue that copying code verbatim is acceptable if it is absolutely necessary to make a compatible, functional work (ink cartridges, in this case, a product integrated with a specific model of printer). Sega Enterprises Ltd. v. Accolade, Inc. finds that aspects of a program necessary to interoperate with another device is not covered by copyright, and code may be studied to satisfy a need to interoperate (if code may actually be copied from another program verbatim is another issue which that court found acceptable, especially cases decided after the passage of the DMCA, though not all courts have, for instance, Atari Games Corp. v. Nintendo of America Inc.). Computer Associates Int. Inc. v. Altai Inc. found that a clean-room rewrite of code is not a derivative work even though it implements the same API and logic. The legal opinion concludes (1) that programmers may receive appropriate copyright protection for innovative utilitarian works containing expression; and (2) that non-protectable technical expression remains in the public domain for others to use freely as building blocks in their own work. Sega; Lexmark; and Computer Associates Intern., Inc. v. Altai, Inc. have all agreeingly cited a report to congress maintaining "when specific instructions, even though previously copyrighted, are the only and essential means of accomplishing a given task, their later use by another will not amount to infringement." Lotus Development Corp. v. Borland Intern., Inc.: If specific words are essential to operating something, then they are part of a ‘method of operation’ and, as such, are unprotectable. In Huntsman v. Soderbergh the EFF submits an amicus curiae brief stating that "intermediate copying" of a program like a DVD (which they argue even includes computer memory) cannot violate copyright and is fair use. As I understand the "intermediate copies" argument was then dropped by the plantiffs, and the court case was later dropped with an act of Congress. In Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc., the court rules that a device that modifies underlying code cannot be a derivitive work by the nature it depends on or integrates with some other licensed work.

I am unable find any ruling or legal opinion based in legal precedent, statute, or natural law that merely interfacing or "sharing an address space" with a program, by itself, could somehow constitute a derivative work, considering it is still two distinct programs, or even that a copyright license has any legal standing to dictate such terms, particularly since I can write and distribute modules without ever agreeing to the GPL shipped with Drupal:

5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License.

I could still make fair-use changes to the code under many conditions if I happened to need to; and I can (and have) written wrappers to execute modules neither containing any Drupal code, and could in theory write a compatible API with public domain code in which modules could be written then tested, profiled, debugged, or integrated into another platform entirely, in which case, compatibility with Drupal would be coincidental. Outside patent law, I unaware of any law that allows a license to dictate that newly written code is automatically licensed with specific terms just because it is able to do certain things.

Another unclear area has respect to licensing, while there is a statement to developers that their code will be packaged as GPL, I can't find any corresponding statement saying that code in a repository is GPL, to legally allow anonymous checkout/forking of modules, particularly from http://git.drupal.org where LICENSE.txt doesn't even exist (save the Drupal core). I understand this is made sufficiently clear in other ways (the FAQ says "all contributed files hosted on Drupal.org are licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later."), however I am not sure this is clear to all people, in particular I saw one comment speculating "code in CVS is NOT currently licensed under GPL."

To address my original concern: If I release my patches and modules from copyright, while you could (as I understand) re-license it under the GPL, it wouldn't mean anything, none of the restrictions will apply because you can simply revert back to public domain (for the unmodified work in question, later changes could copyright the work, as it creates a derivative work). I'm not seeing how it follows from this fact that you can force a particular license, in this case, if there is a version with no copyright owner and no license. So, what would the policy be for accepting such code?

How may the FAQ be written to clarify these points that it leaves open? In particular it would help to clarify that this is only a policy of Drupal.org in order to host modules; and to clarify if code checked into a Drupal.org repository is covered by GPL, or if this only happens after it is packaged thereby making it unlawful to fork Drupal from CVS/Git.

Anyone who would like to help with these points would be most welcome, thank you.