RMS On Header Files and Derivative Works

Posted by timothy on Sunday March 20, 2011 @03:35AM from the but-I-said-'a'-first dept.

tomhudson writes "In this email from 2003, Richard Stallman says 'I've talked with our lawyer about one specific issue that you raised: that of using simple material from header files. Someone recently made the claim that including a header file always makes a derivative work. That's not the FSF's view. Our view is that just using structure definitions, typedefs, enumeration constants, macros with simple bodies, etc., is NOT enough to make a derivative work. It would take a substantial amount of code (coming from inline functions or macros with substantial bodies) to do that.' This should help end the recent FUD about the Android 'clean headers.'"

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Re:Stallman has changed his mind by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-20 04:48 · Score: 2, Interesting

Around 1994, they allowed viral-free bison output.
Re:Copyrights on facts by tomhudson · 2011-03-20 05:21 · Score: 3, Interesting

So here's a real question: If the header files cannot be copyrighted, why did those linux people attempt to PUT copyright on it by including a copyright in the file? If it can't be copyrighted and the folks who maintain the GPL say it can't be copyrighted then why is that copyright in the file in the first place? Are the linux folks trying to use FUD here too?
1. Because some things, like comments, etc., ARE copyrightable.
2. Because we're only talking about a specific subset of headers here. Other headers may contain code that can be copyrighted. The kernel is a lot more than 27,000 lines.
HTH :-)