On Wed, Mar 23, 2005 at 04:19:31PM -0300, Humberto Massa wrote: > Henning Makholm wrote: > > >Snip "explanation" that does not do anything the idea that bits are > >treated differently by copyright just becuase they are in a file > >called .h. > > Repeating: bits that are in files called .h are not copied in your work, I think you need to stop referring to .h files. There's no general rule that can be applied to files based purely on their extension. I think what you meant to say is something like "files referenced by a .c file by means of #include are only mechanically copied into your work, no creative transformation takes place and therefore no derivation takes place". Would that be accurate? That having been said, your example earlier of errno.h and the internal __err_msgs array could be an interesting example. If I reference that __err_msgs array in my own code, does that then "pull in" errno.h in a deeper fashion, such that I have then created a derived work of errno.h? > >>Concluding: when you write a ".c" file, it is or not a derivative work > >>on another original work independently of what the compiler and linker > >>will do in the future. > > > >I repeat: No, but the resulting .o file may be derived from another > >work that the compiler also read while producing it. > > Not derived. Never. To derive you need inteligence (in Brazilian > letter-of-law, "spirit"). A compiler does not have it. Neither does a > linker. Only a person does. So whether or not a source file is derived from a file it includes by reference is determined before you ever wave a compiler near it? Seems sensible enough, if a little tricky to determine (I guess that's why we have courts for this, to stuff it up *properly*). > >I do not see how that has anything to do with the supposed magical > >copyright-evading capabilities of filenames that end in .h. > > This is an artifact of your imagination... I said only that, in general, > the *usual* .h does not contain copyrightable bits. And I suspect you What you actually said initially was "Basically, ".h" bits are *not* copyrightable." Nothing in there about "in general" or "*usual*", except what might be implied by "Basically". I'm happy to believe that you merely misexpressed yourself, but on the face of it, what you wrote implies that if you put your novel in a file called foo.h, it's not copyrightable. Remember, all we have here is written word. Cultural or linguistic shorthand rarely works well on a mailing list. Something like "the common contents of a .h file, being prototypes, symbol definitions, and trivial macros, are not copyrightable" would have probably had the same meaning (for you) as what you did write, and would have saved all of this subsequent confusion for the rest of us. - Matt
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