And The Award For Most Legally-Encumbered “Hello World†Program ...

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

"Original" for copyright means independent creative effort.

Does that mean that databases can’t be copyrighted?

 

[Joshua Cranmer]

You mean, the way you could be “breaching copyright†by “redistributingâ€
your USENET posting containing quotations of my words?

Nope, you agreed to let us do that. It's all there in the fine print of
the ToS for your ISP.

 

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

quick check revealed an error here:
the "Hello World" string can be classified as a "short phrase", and so
apparently, can't itself be held under copyright. this means that the
"Hello World" program would remain as an original work even with copying
the "Hello World" string from another program.

And the award for most obsessive legal dissection of a five-line program
goes to...

 

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Nope, you agreed to let us do that. It's all there in the fine print of
the ToS for your ISP.

Feel free to find any evidence on my ISP’s website that it even knows it
runs a USENET server.

 

[BGB]

Does that mean that databases can’t be copyrighted?

the stuff I went and read on the matter mostly defined the "original" in
the copyright sense in terms of "the original concrete expression".


this seems to partly exclude the creative aspect, and does include many
of the traditional things which *are* copyrighted:
aggregates of various files or data;
random images or recordings of various things;
....


however, apparently copyright does not cover "tables of numbers or other
factual data", which could, possibly, be taken to imply an inability to
copyright a database...

but, taken to its logical extreme, this would effectively undermine the
ability to apply copyright to data in the first place, since one "could"
attempt to apply such an interpretation to data as a whole ("every file
is just a big table of numbers in the range of 0 to 255...").


which, of course, would not likely hold water in court...

"well, these DVD ISOs were just simply tables of numbers..." and "I
didn't actually distribute the files, they just happened to sort of leak
out and rain down on these various computers in a sort of bit-torrent...".

as the jury just stands there being like "right...".

 

[Arved Sandstrom]

No, I'm afraid that's not true. The first couple of lines define the
copyright _holders_, but the rest of it is the _license_ (a BSD
license in this case).

The distinction is important. This isn't a case of Oracle trying to
"claim" something as their own and prevent others using it; rather
Oracle are explicitly giving us permission to use their work. Now for
a 5 line "Hello World" program it probably doesn't make much
_practical_ difference as no-one's going to complain if you copy it
without permission (even assuming it wasn't classed as a derived
work). But for larger bodies of code (such as the JDK) having that
license boiler plate is very significant; without a Free license
projects such as OpenJDK would not be possible.

Much as I enjoy Oracle-bashing it seems quite wrong to portray
granting a Free software license as something bad.

Tongue-in-cheek definitions:
Copyright: I wrote this code so I'm the only one who can use it. You
can write your own version, but don't copy mine.
Copyright + License: I wrote this code but you can use it as well
(subject to terms & conditions...).
Software Patent: I don't care who wrote this code; just send me the
money every time you use it.

OK, fair enough. I understand the distinction, it's just that it's
irritating me enormously to see anyone even bothering to discuss the
license part. There is no license if there is no copyright, and for this
example (although there are many others out there) NO copyright exists.

Oracle *copied* that code - they have no copyright. They can't license
that software because they don't have copyright. It's not up to them to
"explicitly give us permission to use their work", because in this case
it's not their bloody work. There is boilerplate there that looks like
BSD license fluff, but it's not a license because nothing exists to be
licensed.

This is not about Oracle bashing at all, although they clearly have some
stupid lawyers and fearful developers (*somebody* had to meekly put that
boilerplate in, and it wasn't a lawyer). This is about *us* being aware
of what can be copyrighted, licensed and patented.

AHS

 

[Paul Cager]

OK, fair enough. I understand the distinction, it's just that it's
irritating me enormously to see anyone even bothering to discuss the
license part.

I can understand your irritation, and I didn't intend to add to it. I
just like the idea of Free Software and I sometimes get carried away.

I agree that adding that notice to a Hello World program seems
ridiculous and I probably wouldn't have bothered with it myself. But
that type of notice (or its absence) is very important in Free
Software; misunderstandings about it in a "Hello World" program can
lead to real problems when developing "real" software.

Think of my position like this. Suppose someone posts a Hello World
program that does:

System.out.println(new String("Hello World"));

That spurious "new String()" might be considered totally harmless in a
Hello World program, but you'd still probably want to call attention
to it, so it doesn't lead to bad habits in real programs.

There is no license if there is no copyright, and for this
example (although there are many others out there) NO copyright exists.

Unfortunately unless something is in the public domain (which has its
own set of problems) copyright exists even if the author doesn't want
it ("copyright arises upon fixation"). That's why the safest route is
usually to grant a license.

Oracle *copied* that code - they have no copyright. They can't license
that software because they don't have copyright. It's not up to them to
"explicitly give us permission to use their work", because in this case
it's not their bloody work.

Certainly no argument there - if they copied it then it's not theirs
to license.

 

[Joshua Cranmer]

Feel free to find any evidence on my ISP’s website that it even knows it
runs a USENET server.

s/ISP/Usenet provider/, then.

 

[Daniele Futtorovic]

In message


Who said it was, strawman-spouter?

Arved did, you fucking knucklehead. Try at least to feign having read
your own trolls.

 

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

In message

I agree that adding that notice to a Hello World program seems
ridiculous and I probably wouldn't have bothered with it myself. But
that type of notice (or its absence) is very important in Free
Software ...

Only up (down) to a point. As I understand it, even the FSF themselves, for
example, don’t worry about you accepting their contributor agreement before
sending them a patch, unless the amount of code concerned gets up to some
significant size.

 

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

s/ISP/Usenet provider/, then.

Go on then, quote me the terms of use of my USENET provider that takes away
my copyright on my own words.

 

[Joshua Cranmer]

Go on then, quote me the terms of use of my USENET provider that takes away
my copyright on my own words.

It doesn't take away your copyright. It just requires you to grant them
an irrevocable, perpetual, royalty-free license to your words, and, if I
recall my legal stuff correctly, furthermore allows them to relicense it
to other people.

 

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

It doesn't take away your copyright. It just requires you to grant them
an irrevocable, perpetual, royalty-free license to your words, and, if I
recall my legal stuff correctly, furthermore allows them to relicense it
to other people.

So where does it say that?