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Re: sct public domain



On 06/24/2016 04:00 AM, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Jacob Adams writes ("sct public domain"):
>> Firstly, the license of sct consists of one line:
>> /* public domain, do as you wish
> 
> Seems like a clear enough intent to dedicate to the public domain,
> along with a permission to deal freely.  So yes.

Ok that makes sense. Wasn't sure if public domain was more complicated
but clearly not.

> 
>> Secondly, sct.c contains these lines:
>>
>> /* cribbed from redshift, but truncated with 500K steps */
>> static const struct { float r; float g; float b; } whitepoints[] = {
>> 	{ 1.00000000,  0.18172716,  0.00000000, }, /* 1000K */
>>
>> redshift is a program that does the exact same thing but with more code.
>> This part is clearly copied and so does sct need to be GPL because it
>> borrows code from redshift? This is data and so it could be not
>> copyrightable but I don't know.
> 
> Is the formatting from redshift too ?  If not then I think the r and b
> values are probably fixed and the only thing remaining is the g value.
> Not sure if that's enough to make it copyright.  It might depend on
> what exactly those values are.  I don't know enough about colour
> spaces and whatnot to say for usre.
> 
> You could always ask the relevant redshift copyrightholder and see
> what they think.
> 

I emailed Ingo Thies (who is credited with creating the table in
redshift) and he said that the table was created "by following
mathematical rules of color integration and conversion from the CIE 1931
color space to sRGB" and doubted it was copyrightable at all. He also
said he would have no problem releasing it to the public domain even if
it was copyrightable.

It doesn't seem like a conversion like that is copyrightable though. Do
I still credit him or is this definitely not copyrightable?


Thanks for your help,
-- 
Jacob Adams
GPG Key: AF6B 1C26 E2D0 A988 432B  94F4 24C0 2B85 B59F E5A9

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