Re: [O/T 4 cla] Re: GPL and "free" software

[Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-dejanews.com>]

In article <7ha31n$htn$1@Mercury.mcs.net>,
  les@MCS.COM (Leslie Mikesell) wrote:
> Of course not - this is usenet.  Anything goes here.

I am not quite sure what that means. It is always important
to understand what kind of knolwedge and experience goes into
usenet posts. The "of course not" here is not appropriate. Yes
there are plenty of people posting who do not have the knowledge
to post but post anyway, but there are also many experts who
do speak as experts (we have had at least one person whom I
assumed was an attorney or at least very knowledgable in the
law posting here, and up to the above, I had assumed that you
had similar expertise).

> But I do have a pretty good understanding of what a patch
> actually does.

I think you may assume that we all know what a patch is (says
he trying to keep from making some sarcastic comment :-)
Seriously, of COURSE we all know what a patch is, but that
has little to do with the discussion at hand, which is not
about patches but about software copyright.

The issue is knowing how software copyright works in terms
of case law. The case law here is not inaccessible, in fact
it makes quite interesting technical reading.

You can't figure out what the law is by thinking about what
it *should* be according to your common sense view, you have
to look at what the statutes actually say, and in this
particular case, understand the abstraction process, which is
the key here, and which I think you are not understanding as
best I can read your posts.

Once again you do NOT simply copyright text when it comes
to software, you copyright protectable elements of the design
at all levels of abstraction.

Could you copyright an empty file. I would say that you can
certainly see circumstances in which an empty file could be
copyrighted.

Suppose a file represented some particular option in a standard
algorithm.

You discovered a new more efficient form in which this option
was not needed.

You program the result, and the file for the option is now null
since the option is not needed.

I would guess that this would be a protectable element.
But you would have to look at the exact circumstances to
actually make a judgment.

Software copyright is not a simple issue, as many recent
court cases have shown.




--== Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ ==--
---Share what you know. Learn what you don't.---