Re: BOINC: lib/cal.h license issue agree with the DFSG?
On Tue, 05 Jan 2010, Mike Hommey wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 02, 2010 at 03:43:53PM -0800, Don Armstrong wrote:
> > It seems like AMD should really be distributing these header files
> > with a maximum permissive license like MIT/Expat or similar.
> > Perhaps someone should contact them and try to get it to happen?
>
> Or maybe nobody should care, because they don't contain anything
> copyrightable ?
Whether the code bits are copyrightable or not is necessarily a
jurisdiction-dependent question. While I'd hope that the code bits
weren't copyrightable (at least in the US), I'm not aware of case law
which has dealt with the copyrightability of interfaces and header
files which have a degree of flexibility as to their implementation.
As such, when the author states that the work is indeed copyrighted,
our default position should be that they are correct, and we should
attempt to obtain a license to use the work that satisfies the DFSG.
Alternatively, since the interface itself shouldn't be copyrighted,
though a particular representation of it may be, a chinese wall
implementation of the interface can be enacted.
> (except maybe comments)
In this case, the comments are rather copious, so they are certainly
copyrighted. We definetly cannot distribute the file as it exists
upstream in BOINC.[1]
Don Armstrong
1: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/svn/trunk/boinc/lib/cal.h
--
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I just couldn't find an algorithm that fit.
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http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
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