[Date Prev][Date Next]
[Chronological]
[Thread]
[Top]
Re: commit: ldap/servers/slapd/schema core.schema
Quanah Gibson-Mount wrote:
> Debian sez:
This is factually false. Recipes cannot be copyrighted, nor can interface
specifications, nor can telephone books, except to the degree that a
compilation copyright applies.
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl122.html
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#102
Mere listings of ingredients cannot be copyrighted, but recipes which
include literary expression in the form of an explanation or directions
can be copyrighted.
I couldn't find anything that pertains to interface specifications in
any of the text for the laws.
things can be distributed according to the License granted by the
copyright holder.
Debian sez:
Yes, and the license in this case is non-free, so it's good that the
material wasn't copyrightable in the first place.
If there's an exception in the copyright law that supports this
statement, it ought to be easy for the Debian folks to provide the
reference.
Personally I think most of the copyright law is broken and needs to be
overhauled, but that's a side issue. Notice in 102(b)
(b) 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.
Computer programs are nothing but collections of procedures, and yet an
exception seems to have been made somewhere (I don't know where)
allowing them to be copywritten. Bitmap fonts apparently are excluded
from protection, which is why Adobe invented Postscript Type1 fonts,
which are actually collections of Postscript programs, in order to gain
copyright protection for their fonts.
--
-- Howard Chu
Chief Architect, Symas Corp. http://www.symas.com
Director, Highland Sun http://highlandsun.com/hyc
OpenLDAP Core Team http://www.openldap.org/project/