[T]he Supreme Court ruled that a mere collection of facts can't be
copyrighted.
Would the Linux people, then, be able to assert
that their C code is merely programmable facts which generates certain
(MD5|MD4|SHA1|etc) hashes? Chew on that one, SCO.
No, it would be a good thing. It has always been the position of the FSF that software hoarding is unethical, and that software copyright should be abolished. The GPL is a mid-term tool used to prevent people from restricting the use (/modification/distribution) of GPL'd software.
From the contents of your post, I see you are aware that if we were to just release software into the public domain, modifications could then legally become propietary. So instead we it release under the GPL which prevents that from happening. But if there was no legal basis for restricting software - if all software was pubic domain, then there would be no need for the GPL. Copyleft is only necisarry because of the existence of copyright.
From the contents of your post, I see you are aware that if we were to just release software into the public domain, modifications could then legally become propietary. So instead we it release under the GPL which prevents that from happening. But if there was no legal basis for restricting software - if all software was pubic domain, then there would be no need for the GPL. Copyleft is only necisarry because of the existence of copyright.
If software was not copyrighted, the world of software development would be free to take and use any code they wanted from anywhere, at any time, and do anything with it they pleased.
This would lead to the distribution of much of what is now "free" software, but in compiled form, sold only after being compiled with a compiler which would completely obfuscate the resulting executable making it exceedingly hard to reverse engineer/decompile the code.
Essentially, we would live in a world where the highest paid engineers were those who know how to obfuscate well. "Free" software wouldn't gain anything, and indeed may be eclipsed by closed source versions of software which have proprietary modifications to make them more attractive. Unlike todays situation where closed source companies cannot make effective business use of GPLd (or similar) code, we would enter into an era of unparalleled code theft and plagiarism. Legal, of course.
What I think the FSF wants to get to, is a point where copyright *does not apply* to software, and in addition, it becomes a legal requirement to distribute copies of source code with all software.
In return for the legal protection of copyright, developers should have to distribute their source code - this I do not argue with at all - but copyright (or copyleft) itself will still be required to keep free software free.
Note, that I am primarily a closed source user, but would prefer copyrighted software with mandated source code distribution.
(1) PROTECTION NOT EXTENDED- Subject to paragraph (2), protection under section 3 shall not extend to computer programs, including any computer program used in the manufacture, production, operation, or maintenance of a database, or to any element of a computer program necessary to its operation.
Okay now here's a riddle - Let's say that Microsoft comes out with Longhorn and WinFS [com.com]. My files are now in a database. Can they take even the smallest form of data out (ie a subset as per the definitions) without violating this law?
Neat
A number of people pointed out that code is excluded from the bill, but they miss the point. The court ruled that they can't be copyrighted prior to the proposed bill. The bill has nothing to do with it. grub's point is that copyright law would, in this case, not extend to code. But that's still a tough sell.
C code is no more a set of facts than poetry is a set of facts. C does more than generate hashes, for one thing (at least the Linux code does more than that, else there'd be a lot of coders who've wasted a lot of time). Code is a set of instructions, which are together part of a process. It's creative, in the sense that you put together programs in a language the same way a writer puts together a book. A collection of, say, reserved names in Java may be merely a collection of facts; an original creation is not. It's also inventive, in the patentable sense (`look-and-feel' patents, of course, raise some big controversy). But it's not simply a collection of facts.
Who owns the facts? (Score:4, Interesting)
[T]he Supreme Court ruled that a mere collection of facts can't be copyrighted.
Would the Linux people, then, be able to assert that their C code is merely programmable facts which generates certain (MD5|MD4|SHA1|etc) hashes? Chew on that one, SCO.
In that case (Score:4, Insightful)
If it goes one way, it can go the other in this situation.
Re:Who owns the facts? (Score:5, Insightful)
From the contents of your post, I see you are aware that if we were to just release software into the public domain, modifications could then legally become propietary. So instead we it release under the GPL which prevents that from happening. But if there was no legal basis for restricting software - if all software was pubic domain, then there would be no need for the GPL. Copyleft is only necisarry because of the existence of copyright.
Re:Who owns the facts? (Score:5, Insightful)
If software was not copyrighted, the world of software development would be free to take and use any code they wanted from anywhere, at any time, and do anything with it they pleased.
This would lead to the distribution of much of what is now "free" software, but in compiled form, sold only after being compiled with a compiler which would completely obfuscate the resulting executable making it exceedingly hard to reverse engineer/decompile the code.
Essentially, we would live in a world where the highest paid engineers were those who know how to obfuscate well. "Free" software wouldn't gain anything, and indeed may be eclipsed by closed source versions of software which have proprietary modifications to make them more attractive. Unlike todays situation where closed source companies cannot make effective business use of GPLd (or similar) code, we would enter into an era of unparalleled code theft and plagiarism. Legal, of course.
What I think the FSF wants to get to, is a point where copyright *does not apply* to software, and in addition, it becomes a legal requirement to distribute copies of source code with all software.
In return for the legal protection of copyright, developers should have to distribute their source code - this I do not argue with at all - but copyright (or copyleft) itself will still be required to keep free software free.
Note, that I am primarily a closed source user, but would prefer copyrighted software with mandated source code distribution.
Re:Who owns the facts? (Score:5, Informative)
(1) PROTECTION NOT EXTENDED- Subject to paragraph (2), protection under section 3 shall not extend to computer programs, including any computer program used in the manufacture, production, operation, or maintenance of a database, or to any element of a computer program necessary to its operation.
Re:Who owns the facts? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Who owns the facts? (Score:5, Informative)
C code is no more a set of facts than poetry is a set of facts. C does more than generate hashes, for one thing (at least the Linux code does more than that, else there'd be a lot of coders who've wasted a lot of time). Code is a set of instructions, which are together part of a process. It's creative, in the sense that you put together programs in a language the same way a writer puts together a book. A collection of, say, reserved names in Java may be merely a collection of facts; an original creation is not. It's also inventive, in the patentable sense (`look-and-feel' patents, of course, raise some big controversy). But it's not simply a collection of facts.