Re: No-Copyright?
Ole Streicher writes ("No-Copyright?"):
> one (Java) source file of an ITP package (jcdf) has the following comments:
>
> * The code for the Huffman and Adaptive Huffman decompressing stream
> * implementations in this class is based on the C implementation in
> * "The Data Compression Book" (Mark Nelson, 1992), via the code
> * in cdfhuff.c from the CDF source distribution.
> *
> * <p>On the topic of intellectual property, Mark Nelson
> * <a href="http://marknelson.us/code-use-policy";>says</a>:
> * <ul>
> * <li>It is my intention that anyone who buys the book or magazine be free
> * to use the source code in any form they please. I only request that
> * any use that involves public reproduction include proper attribution.
> * any use that involves public reproduction include proper attribution.
> * <li>I assert that in no case will I initiate or cooperate with any attempt
> * to enforce the copyright on the source code, whether it belongs to me
> * or a publisher.
> * </ul>
> * And I even bought the book (MBT).
>
> https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/debian-astro/packages/jcdf.git/tree/BitExpandInputStream.java
>
> What is this? No-enforce-copyright with an attribution requirement?
> Upstream itself uses LGPL-3.
That's a big ambiguous as to who owns the copyright. Often copyright
of books ends up owned by the publisher, and publishers are often
bad.
I found this:
https://fossies.org/linux/cdf/src/lib/cdfhuff.c
That has a longer version of the same statement. I think that, plus
the fact that no publisher has tried to enforce this, over a period of
decades, means that a publisher would find it quite difficult to do
so.
So it's fine. I would c&p the longer statement from that web page I
found.
Ian.
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