"Give people easy ways to navigate through information provided by their device apps via a separate control window with tabs"
Web pages composed of framesets, with the navigation in one frame, and the results displayed in one or more frames, are prior art. There is no semantic difference between tabs and textual links.
Fairly short answer: Software patents are a mistake, as are business patents. Software is written, not "built", and should only be protected by copyright or trademark law, not patent. Patents are for "things".
They seem to act just like a patent troll in this situation. In my industry (Pharmaceutical) there's a company that has a patent on validating user input in web applications by verifying it at the server. They've been going around and threatening all EDC (Electronic Data Capture) makers with that.
Any pre-javascript web page login screen is definitely prior art.
In other words, this has been around since the first days of the web.
... and before, if you want to count logging in to a remote server (or even localhost).
I wouldn't be surprised if Google has a BSD implementation of Android.
Or better yet, maybe a new OS not based on any previous OS. Even Linus said he expects linux to eventually be replaced by something else.
The next OS:
small, fast (written in assembler)
self-modifying code with the correct privileges (why have jump tables when you can just update one address)
That last one is important if you want to start giving your core any of the characteristics of AI without the waste.
Alright, where are all the Microsoft astroturfers telling us why this is actually a good thing?
They're still in shell-shock from having their last piece of FUD (that Android has a "bigger problem than Java" because of the linux kernel headers) blow up in their face. That has all the appearance of a support operation for today's announcement, but they've clearly lost the momentum.
They'll be back... right after the Beast from Redmond receives a new batch of chairs.
Their refusals to take licenses leave us no choice but to bring legal action to defend our innovations and fulfill our responsibility to our customers, partners, and shareholders to safeguard the billions of dollars we invest each year to bring great software products and services to market,” he added.
The patents at issue cover a range of functionality embodied in Android devices that are essential to the user experience, including: natural ways of interacting with devices by tabbing through various screens to find the information they need; surfing the Web more quickly, and interacting with documents and e-books.
This from the company that derided tabbed browsing as something that end users didn't want when Firefox had it and IE didn't.
They're doing a great job protecting their "great software products and services" - they're so protected that nobody's seen them.
This is what you do when your own product (WP7) can't compete on the merits.
A license cannot define what a derivative work is; copyright law does that. At most, Linux's license can grant permission to people to use some parts of it in non-GPLed derivative works; it can't say whether or not you have done something that requires that permission.
And that's exactly what the exception in the COPYING file does - it clarifies that the GPL (which forms most of the body of the COPYING file) does not apply with respect to using the headers to access kernel services because doing so does not create a derived work.
So while a license cannot define what a derivative work is, it can certainly waive any claims to you creating a derivative work, which is effectively what was done here.
This is, of course, consistent with copyright law, which makes it clear that interfaces, etc., are not protected by copyright. It's just nice to be able to point to the waiver instead of having to argue whether there's an issue of law:-)
The Linux COPYING file does not say that. Why do you keep lying about this?
Sure it does. Go read it. It's in the source distribution of the kernel. The very first lines, in fact, of the COPYING file:
NOTE! This copyright does *not* cover user programs that use kernel services by normal system calls - this is merely considered normal use of the kernel, and does *not* fall under the heading of "derived work". Also note that the GPL below is copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation, but the instance of code that it refers to (the Linux kernel) is copyrighted by me and others who actually wrote it.
Also note that the only valid version of the GPL as far as the kernel is concerned is _this_ particular version of the license (ie v2, not v2.2 or v3.x or whatever), unless explicitly otherwise stated.
Linus Torvalds
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2, June 1991
Also, it appears you overlooked part of what RMS said, even though you quoted it: "It would take a substantial amount of code (coming from inline functions or macros with substantial bodies) to do that.". Guess what? The Linux headers have such. Oops.
Guess what? Bionic doesn't use the entire kernel, which hundreds of megabytes. Go read the README.txt that comes with Bionic for more info. Oh, wait, that's too much work, same as actually looking at the kernel COPYING file was.
Finally, you mention the Supreme Court. Could you cite some specific cases? I can't point out how you botched your understanding of what the Supreme Court says without more information. (I am confident you did botch it, because you've botched pretty much every other thing you've ever written on Slashdot concerning copyright and licensing).
The only one who's botched up anything is you, again.
In Feist vs Rural, the Supreme Court reversed the Appeal Court and stated that facts can not be copyrighted. Things like constants, POSIX standards, data structure declarations, etc., are facts, and can be copied from the headers with no problems.
Or look at Gates vs Bando, which delineates the Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison test to be used to decide if something is infringing.
Then you can look up "scenes a faire" to find out why certain other code, including small inline macros, are not necessarily protected by copyright even when included in an otherwise copyrighted work.
Could some of you idiots who keep voting this guy "insightful" explain your reasoning? For fuck's sake, he quoted the COPYING file, so all you had to do was glance up and read and you could see his claim about it is wrong. It says nothing about the kernel header files.
You generally do not need to use the kernel header files in order to write or compile programs that make system calls. For example, to write a program that uses fork, you include sys/types.h and unistd.h.
The COPYING file IS for the kernel source, including (drum roll please) the kernel headers.
But let's cut to the chase. Bionic is generated from the kernel headers in the linux distribution. Here's what the article from h-online reported a few days ago when this all started
Nimmer looks at the process that the Android developers created to produce the header files for Bionic, a compact alternative to glibc which also includes Android specific functionality.
The build process for Bionic takes the GPL licensed kernel header files and, using a number of Python scripts, reprocesses them to create "clean" header files for Apache licensed Bionic
OR, you could read the the very first line of the Bionic README.txt, which also says that this uses kernel header files:
Bionic comes with a set of 'clean' Linux kernel headers that can safely be
included by userland applications and libraries without fear of hideous
conflicts. for more information why this is needed, see the "RATIONALE"
section at the end of this document.
these clean headers are automatically generated by several scripts located
in the 'bionic/kernel/tools' directory, which process a set of original
and unmodified kernel headers in order to get rid of many annoying
declarations and constructs that usually result in compilation failure.
the 'clean headers' only contain type and macro definitions, with the
exception of a couple static inline functions used for performance
reason (e.g. optimized CPU-specific byte-swapping routines)
they can be included from C++, or when compiling code in strict ANSI mode.
they can be also included before or after any Bionic C library header.
So , who's the idiot - the people who modded this insightful, or you for calling them idiots?
But let's look further - the kernel source headers used, as per the README.txt file:
the generation process works as follows:
* 'bionic/kernel/original/' contains a set of kernel headers as normally found in the 'include' directory of a normal Linux kernel source tree. note that this should only contain the files that are really needed by Android (use 'find_headers.py' to find these automatically).
* 'bionic/kernel/common' contains the non-arch-specific clean headers and directories (e.g. linux, asm-generic and mtd)
*'bionic/kernel/arch-arm/' contains the ARM-specific directory tree of clean headers.
* 'bionic/kernel/arch-arm/asm' contains the real ARM-specific headers
* 'bionic/kernel/arch-x86' similarly contains all headers and symlinks to be used on x86
* 'bionic/kernel/tools' contains various Python and shell scripts used to manage and re-generate the headers
You're quite clearly getting trolled, no lawyer in the world would go and present several non-realtime comments and fail so badly to convey his/her point that he/she would have to resort to name-calling.
Shhh - mustn't scare them off
Why do you think I keep saying "You're not a lawyer."
F.M. is too chicken to come out and defend his lies any more (except anonymously) because I keep shellacking him and calling him a liar to his face, as do others, so I've got to make do with what's at hand.
It was obvious just from the initial sentence structure that this is just some punk. This is the type of person who now follows people like Florian Mueller. People clearly out of their depth. That doesn't mean I won't take the opportunity to to go into greater detail to expose the whole copyright "problem" for being the non-problem that it is. After all, the more we do this, the quicker the "pundits" and "analysts" will get a clue.
It is working... Mueller is regarded as a joke to many of them already... good for a story if it's a slow news day (everyone watches a train wreck), but certainly not an expert on anything other than bovine excrement. At this point, his hidden agenda isn't all that important any more, because nobody cares what he says, except as an opportunity for more laughs.
"He used to be a pain in the neck... now I have a lower opinion of him - a couple of feet lower." sounds about right.
NOTE! The linux unistd library-functions (the low-level interface to linux: system calls etc) are excempt from the copyright - you may use them as you wish, and using those in your binary files won't mean that your files are automatically under the GNU copyleft. This concerns /only/ the unistd-library and those (few) other library functions I have written: most of the rest of the library has it's own copyrights (or is public domain). See the library sources for details of those.
Kernel 0.01 was dated only a year earlier, so the vast majority of the code in question isn't in question (especially since the vast majority of the code has nothing to do with this issue:-)
Quoting a court case that says the exact opposite of what he claims (maybe he didn't get the memo that the Supreme Court reversed the Appeals Court 20 years ago when he did a quick Internet search to try to troll)?
The Supreme Court, in Feist vs Rural, reversed the Court of Appeals and said that facts are not copyrightable, even if the work in which they are found is copyrightable, whether it is a newspaper story or a compilation of facts and protected elements.
Any facts in header files are simply not eligible for copyright protection, even when embedded in a copyrighted header file.
Facts are such things as POSIX identifiers, various data structures, etc. Bionic strips out the stuff eligible for protection, and leaves "just the facts" and other non-copyrighted entities.
And no, we've pretty much demolished your claims of being a lawyer. You have continually claimed that Feist vs Rural says that copyright extends to both the layout and presentation PLUS the underlying facts, despite the the judgment saying the exact opposite, as anyone who follows the above link will see.
please just go read feist. and avoid reading excerpts.
an author’s original compilation, arrangement or selection of facts can be protected by copyright
wtf does this mean ? IT MEANS YOU ARE AN IDIOT.
are they going to award damages based on only the infringing potions or the whole work ? YOU DUMB SHIT BAG. THE WHOLE WORK IS PROTECTED.
read the fucking text and interpret it you moron.
The Supreme Court says otherwise.
The original court, and the appeals court, agreed with your stand. The Supreme Court reversed it - the "collections copyright" doctrine was overthrown. You could no longer claim a copyright on both the layout and the underlying facts, as the Supreme Court ruled that facts are not subject to copyright in Feist vs Rural.
Although Feist altered many of Rural's listings, several were identical to listings in Rural's white pages. The District Court granted summary judgment to Rural in its copyright infringement suit, holding that telephone directories are copyrightable. The Court of Appeals affirmed.
Held:
Rural's white pages are not entitled to copyright, and therefore Feist's use of them does not constitute infringement. Pp. 344-364.
(a) Article I, 8, cl. 8, of the Constitution mandates originality as a prerequisite for copyright protection. The constitutional requirement necessitates independent creation plus a modicum of creativity. Since facts do not owe their origin to an act of authorship, they are not original, and thus are not copyrightable. Although a compilation of facts may possess the requisite originality because the author typically chooses which facts to include, in what order to place them, and how to arrange the data so that readers may use them effectively, copyright protection extends only to those components of the work that are original to the author, not to the facts themselves. This fact/expression dichotomy severely limits the scope of protection in fact-based works. Pp. 344-351.
So, the Supreme Court didn't affirm the Appeals Court decision. They explained where past courts had gone wrong in awarding copyright to compilations of mere facts.
Lower courts that adopted a "sweat of the brow" or "industrious collection" test - which extended a compilation's copyright protection beyond selection and arrangement to the facts themselves - misconstrued the 1909 Act and eschewed the fundamental axiom of copyright law that no one may copyright facts or ideas. Pp. 351-361.
(c) Rural's white pages do not meet the constitutional or statutory requirements for copyright protection. While Rural has a valid copyright in the directory as a whole because it contains some forward text and some original material in the yellow pages, there is nothing original in Rural's white page ... 916 F.2d 718, reversed.
So, while Rural had a copyright on parts of their work, they didn't have a copyright on the facts themselves. As tghe supremes pointed out above, it is a fundamental axiom of copyright law that no one may copyright facts or idea
Further on,
The District Court granted summary judgment to Rural, explaining that "[c]ourts have consistently held that telephone directories are copyrightable" and citing a string of lower court decisions. 663 F.Supp. 214, 218 (1987). In an unpublished opinion, the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed "for substantially the reasons given by the district court." App. to Pet. for Cert. 4a, judgt. order reported at 916 F.2d 718 (1990). We granted certiorari, 498 U.S. 808 (1990), to determine whether the copyright in Rural's directory protects the names, towns, and telephone numbers copied by Feist. ... This protection is subject to an important limitation. The mere fact that a work is co
What the fuck are you talking about? None of those cases have anything to do with whether header files constitute a derivative work. Simply because several courts have found the GPL a valid license does not mean all parts of it apply exactly as the person who wrote it wants it to. The fact is also, the GPL doesn't really have shit to do with this. If reuse of header files constitutes a derivative work of any license, then it is for the GPL as well, since derivative work is a legal term with a legal definition non specific to any license. Granted, the nature of the issue at hand means it can't really be tested outside of some sort of Open Source license.
The first case cited included: "the removal of copyrights and such from VNC source code" Sounds pretty on-topic to this discussion.
The second one: "requires distributors to ensure that the code remains open and distributed with the products that use the code." Again, since there was a question as to whether use of the Bionic library would require phone manufacturers to distribute their source code, it's fairly apropos, no?
The third case cited: "litigation against D-Link Germany GmbH regarding D-Link's alleged inappropriate and copyright infringing use of parts of the Linux Operating System Kernel." bears parallels to the current allegations of inappropriate and copyright infringing use of parts of the linux header files.
The fourth case tried to make the claim that the GPL was a contract, and not a license, which would have impacted what the GPL could actually do. Again, if someone's looking for evidence of how the courts treat the GPL, or if they even acknowledge the validity of the GPL, it's worth looking at.
If you can find better examples, I'd appreciate it. Of course, the best examples are about unprotected elements of copyright, as expressed elsewhere, but that wasn't what the poster was asking.
no. youre just... wrong.
the presentation of the facts DOES NOT EXIST WITHOUT THE FACTS. im not trying to spin anything.
go read : Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991) and educate yourself.
besides, i'll probably send a copy of this thread around to my colleagues anyway. they should have a good laugh at your expense.
i work for jones day but you may not have heard of us.
111 S. Ct. at 1288 (internal quotations and citations omitted). Like ideas and processes, facts themselves are not protectable;however, an author’s original compilation, arrangement or selection of facts can be protected by copyright. Feist, 111 S. Ct. at 1289 ; Applied Innovations, 876 F.2d at 636 . However, “the copyright is limited to the particular selection or arrangement. In no event may copyright extend to the facts themselves.” Feist, 111 S. Ct. at 1290
The Supremes say you are full of it.
The Feist decision only extended copyright to the layout, not the underlying facts.
I've heard of Jones, Day - if you work for them, maybe in the mail room, but certainly not as a lawyer. Or are you now going to say that the Supremes got it wrong?
You're wrong, and you just keep giving me more ammunition to shoot you down with every time. You're as bad as Florian Mueller.
Writing a license and knowing exactly how a court of law will interpret that license are two entirely different things. We now may know the intent of the license, but until it's tested in court, that intent means nothing.
"An appeals court in Paris has upheld the ruling from a lower court, which found that the French firm Edu4 had violated the GNU General Public License (GPL). The plaintiff was the French Organisation Association francaise pour la Formation Professionnelle des Adultes (AFPA), an umbrella organization for adult education."
In December 2009, the Software Freedom Conservancy filed lawsuits against 14 consumer electronics vendors alleging that they were not in compliance with the GPL license. Of those 14 vendors, 13 have now either settled amicably or are in productive discussions toward a settlement.
In one case, consumer electronics vendor Westinghouse failed to comply, and a U.S. District Court has now ruled in a default judgment against it.
gpl-violations.org project prevails in court case on GPL violation by D-Link
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DISTRICT COURT OF FRANKFURT ISSUES VERDICT ON GPL VIOLATION OF D-LINK
BERLIN, Germany - September 22, 2006 -- The gpl-violations.org project prevails in court litigation against D-Link Germany GmbH regarding D-Link's alleged inappropriate and copyright infringing use of parts of the Linux Operating System Kernel. ... On September 6, 2006 the district court issued its judgement, confirming the claims by gpl-violations.org, specifically its rights on the subject-matter source code, the violation of the GNU GPL by D-Link, the validity of the GPL under German law, and D-Links obligation to reimburse gpl-violations.org for legal expenses, test purchase and cost of re-engineering.
The GPL tested in US courts - Wallace Vs FSF. by Matt Lee — last modified March 23, 2006 18:34
The GNU General Public License stands firm. On Monday March 20, 2006 US Federal Judge John Daniel Tinder, dismissed the Sherman Act antitrust claims brought against the Free Software Foundation. The claims made by Plaintiff Daniel Wallace included: that the General Public License (GPL) constituted a contract, combination or conspiracy; that it created an unreasonable restraint of trade; and that the FSF conspired with IBM, Red Hat Inc., Novell and other individuals to pool and cross-license their copyrighted intellectual property in a predatory price fixing schem
Half are below average?
1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 11
What is the average of these numbers?
What percentage of them is below that average?
(Answers: 2, and 90%)
this is wrong. facts are copyrightable because the layout and organization of the facts can be copyrighted
And this is wrong. ONLY the layout and organization of the facts, not the fact themselves, are copyrightable.
No matter how you spin it, you are wrong. Facts are not copyrightable.
So when you try to spin it yet again by claiming:
no. the presentation AND the facts are the protected element in all scenarios. the presentation is not independent of the facts. the copyright to a work is the whole work. the presentation cannot be applied to a new set of facts and be protected. it would form a new work.
e.g. bob takes alices presentation from alices protected work. puts in a new set of facts. copyright belongs to bob not to alice.
e.g. alice takes bobs facts. puts em into a whole new presentation. copyright belongs to alice not bob.
... this is simply not true. The facts are not a protected element in ANY scenario. The copyright does not protect "the work as a whole", even if it is issued against the whole work. It only protects those elements that are copyrightable, the same as someone may copyright their version of the dictionary, but that doesn;t give them copyright to the word definitions, just the layout, the frontispiece, the endpapers, and any other unique creative content.
Not only that, but your first example, bob is guilty of infringing alice's copyrights on the presentation of the facts, which is a protected element.
So quit trying to claim you're a lawyer. Or if you are, stop posting anon so we can email a copy of this thread to all your colleagues for the lulz.
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.
No, you're not a lawyer. Or if you are, you're the worst one in the world. But no, you're not a lawyer.
You stated that you can copyright facts. You cannot.
The presentation is the only protected element in all your scenarios. The presentation could be applied to new sets of facts, and the presentation, but not the facts, would still be protected.
Compilation works are a different matter, in that the creativity is in the compilation, not the individual facts. Someone can still use the same facts to create a different compilation. Any lawyer would know the difference.
What do you think of Florian Mueller's antics?
[_] Florian Mueller's blog is the new goatse link. "Oww! My MIND! Quick, get the brain bleach!"
[X] I just want to know who's paying for it.
[_] "I'm an anonymous coward and I approve" -- Florian Mueller
[_] "Damn, forgot to check 'Post Anonymously' -- Florian Mueller
[_] Hey, it generates page hits and sells ads -- editors
[_] I am Steve Ballmer and I approve of Florian Mueller's antics
[_] In Soviet Russia, everyone trolls Florian Mueller.
[_] Florian Mueller had an original idea that wasn't a troll. It died of loneliness.
[_] A grue ate him. Nothing of consequence was lost.
[_] 104% of 42 respondents preferred CowboyNeal.
This latest attempt to generate FUD pretty much seals the deal - his 15 minutes are SO over.
No, that is NOT the version of the GPL that linux uses. Linux uses a non-standard version of the GPL, that begins with this exemption (taken from the latest COPYING file in the kernel sources off my hard drive):
NOTE! This copyright does *not* cover user programs that use kernel services by normal system calls - this is merely considered normal use of the kernel, and does *not* fall under the heading of "derived work". Also note that the GPL below is copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation, but the instance of code that it refers to (the Linux kernel) is copyrighted by me and others who actually wrote it.
Also note that the only valid version of the GPL as far as the kernel is concerned is _this_ particular version of the license (ie v2, not v2.2 or v3.x or whatever), unless explicitly otherwise stated.
Linus Torvalds
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2, June 1991
So, using the headers to access kernel services does not create a derivative work.
This is over and above that the files in question have been stripped of copyrightable content.
Slashdot Mirror
"Give people easy ways to navigate through information provided by their device apps via a separate control window with tabs"
Web pages composed of framesets, with the navigation in one frame, and the results displayed in one or more frames, are prior art. There is no semantic difference between tabs and textual links.
Even shorter answer: 1
Fairly short answer: Software patents are a mistake, as are business patents. Software is written, not "built", and should only be protected by copyright or trademark law, not patent. Patents are for "things".
They seem to act just like a patent troll in this situation. In my industry (Pharmaceutical) there's a company that has a patent on validating user input in web applications by verifying it at the server. They've been going around and threatening all EDC (Electronic Data Capture) makers with that.
Any pre-javascript web page login screen is definitely prior art.
In other words, this has been around since the first days of the web.
Can you email me the name of the company?
Or better yet, maybe a new OS not based on any previous OS. Even Linus said he expects linux to eventually be replaced by something else.
The next OS:
small, fast (written in assembler)
self-modifying code with the correct privileges (why have jump tables when you can just update one address)
That last one is important if you want to start giving your core any of the characteristics of AI without the waste.
Alright, where are all the Microsoft astroturfers telling us why this is actually a good thing?
They're still in shell-shock from having their last piece of FUD (that Android has a "bigger problem than Java" because of the linux kernel headers) blow up in their face. That has all the appearance of a support operation for today's announcement, but they've clearly lost the momentum.
They'll be back ... right after the Beast from Redmond receives a new batch of chairs.
My old 14.4k internet connection and Netscape Navigator 2.0 are prior art.
This from the company that derided tabbed browsing as something that end users didn't want when Firefox had it and IE didn't.
They're doing a great job protecting their "great software products and services" - they're so protected that nobody's seen them.
This is what you do when your own product (WP7) can't compete on the merits.
A license cannot define what a derivative work is; copyright law does that. At most, Linux's license can grant permission to people to use some parts of it in non-GPLed derivative works; it can't say whether or not you have done something that requires that permission.
And that's exactly what the exception in the COPYING file does - it clarifies that the GPL (which forms most of the body of the COPYING file) does not apply with respect to using the headers to access kernel services because doing so does not create a derived work.
So while a license cannot define what a derivative work is, it can certainly waive any claims to you creating a derivative work, which is effectively what was done here.
This is, of course, consistent with copyright law, which makes it clear that interfaces, etc., are not protected by copyright. It's just nice to be able to point to the waiver instead of having to argue whether there's an issue of law :-)
The Linux COPYING file does not say that. Why do you keep lying about this?
Sure it does. Go read it. It's in the source distribution of the kernel. The very first lines, in fact, of the COPYING file:
Also, it appears you overlooked part of what RMS said, even though you quoted it: "It would take a substantial amount of code (coming from inline functions or macros with substantial bodies) to do that.". Guess what? The Linux headers have such. Oops.
Guess what? Bionic doesn't use the entire kernel, which hundreds of megabytes. Go read the README.txt that comes with Bionic for more info. Oh, wait, that's too much work, same as actually looking at the kernel COPYING file was.
Finally, you mention the Supreme Court. Could you cite some specific cases? I can't point out how you botched your understanding of what the Supreme Court says without more information. (I am confident you did botch it, because you've botched pretty much every other thing you've ever written on Slashdot concerning copyright and licensing).
The only one who's botched up anything is you, again.
In Feist vs Rural, the Supreme Court reversed the Appeal Court and stated that facts can not be copyrighted. Things like constants, POSIX standards, data structure declarations, etc., are facts, and can be copied from the headers with no problems.
Or look at Gates vs Bando, which delineates the Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison test to be used to decide if something is infringing.
Then you can look up "scenes a faire" to find out why certain other code, including small inline macros, are not necessarily protected by copyright even when included in an otherwise copyrighted work.
Could some of you idiots who keep voting this guy "insightful" explain your reasoning? For fuck's sake, he quoted the COPYING file, so all you had to do was glance up and read and you could see his claim about it is wrong. It says nothing about the kernel header files.
You generally do not need to use the kernel header files in order to write or compile programs that make system calls. For example, to write a program that uses fork, you include sys/types.h and unistd.h.
The COPYING file IS for the kernel source, including (drum roll please) the kernel headers.
But let's cut to the chase. Bionic is generated from the kernel headers in the linux distribution. Here's what the article from h-online reported a few days ago when this all started
OR, you could read the the very first line of the Bionic README.txt, which also says that this uses kernel header files:
So , who's the idiot - the people who modded this insightful, or you for calling them idiots?
But let's look further - the kernel source headers used, as per the README.txt file:
Looks like you made a monkey of yourself :-)
The Supreme Court says otherwise.
You're quite clearly getting trolled, no lawyer in the world would go and present several non-realtime comments and fail so badly to convey his/her point that he/she would have to resort to name-calling.
Shhh - mustn't scare them off
Why do you think I keep saying "You're not a lawyer."
F.M. is too chicken to come out and defend his lies any more (except anonymously) because I keep shellacking him and calling him a liar to his face, as do others, so I've got to make do with what's at hand.
It was obvious just from the initial sentence structure that this is just some punk. This is the type of person who now follows people like Florian Mueller. People clearly out of their depth. That doesn't mean I won't take the opportunity to to go into greater detail to expose the whole copyright "problem" for being the non-problem that it is. After all, the more we do this, the quicker the "pundits" and "analysts" will get a clue.
It is working ... Mueller is regarded as a joke to many of them already ... good for a story if it's a slow news day (everyone watches a train wreck), but certainly not an expert on anything other than bovine excrement. At this point, his hidden agenda isn't all that important any more, because nobody cares what he says, except as an opportunity for more laughs.
"He used to be a pain in the neck ... now I have a lower opinion of him - a couple of feet lower." sounds about right.
Kernel 0.01 was dated only a year earlier, so the vast majority of the code in question isn't in question (especially since the vast majority of the code has nothing to do with this issue :-)
Follow this thread further down if you want to laugh.
Quoting a court case that says the exact opposite of what he claims (maybe he didn't get the memo that the Supreme Court reversed the Appeals Court 20 years ago when he did a quick Internet search to try to troll)?
Any facts in header files are simply not eligible for copyright protection, even when embedded in a copyrighted header file.
Facts are such things as POSIX identifiers, various data structures, etc. Bionic strips out the stuff eligible for protection, and leaves "just the facts" and other non-copyrighted entities.
And no, we've pretty much demolished your claims of being a lawyer. You have continually claimed that Feist vs Rural says that copyright extends to both the layout and presentation PLUS the underlying facts, despite the the judgment saying the exact opposite, as anyone who follows the above link will see.
please just go read feist. and avoid reading excerpts. an author’s original compilation, arrangement or selection of facts can be protected by copyright wtf does this mean ? IT MEANS YOU ARE AN IDIOT. are they going to award damages based on only the infringing potions or the whole work ? YOU DUMB SHIT BAG. THE WHOLE WORK IS PROTECTED. read the fucking text and interpret it you moron.
The Supreme Court says otherwise.
The original court, and the appeals court, agreed with your stand. The Supreme Court reversed it - the "collections copyright" doctrine was overthrown. You could no longer claim a copyright on both the layout and the underlying facts, as the Supreme Court ruled that facts are not subject to copyright in Feist vs Rural.
Exerpts.
So, the Supreme Court didn't affirm the Appeals Court decision. They explained where past courts had gone wrong in awarding copyright to compilations of mere facts.
So, while Rural had a copyright on parts of their work, they didn't have a copyright on the facts themselves. As tghe supremes pointed out above, it is a fundamental axiom of copyright law that no one may copyright facts or idea
Further on,
What the fuck are you talking about? None of those cases have anything to do with whether header files constitute a derivative work. Simply because several courts have found the GPL a valid license does not mean all parts of it apply exactly as the person who wrote it wants it to. The fact is also, the GPL doesn't really have shit to do with this. If reuse of header files constitutes a derivative work of any license, then it is for the GPL as well, since derivative work is a legal term with a legal definition non specific to any license. Granted, the nature of the issue at hand means it can't really be tested outside of some sort of Open Source license.
The first case cited included: "the removal of copyrights and such from VNC source code" Sounds pretty on-topic to this discussion.
The second one: "requires distributors to ensure that the code remains open and distributed with the products that use the code." Again, since there was a question as to whether use of the Bionic library would require phone manufacturers to distribute their source code, it's fairly apropos, no?
The third case cited: "litigation against D-Link Germany GmbH regarding D-Link's alleged inappropriate and copyright infringing use of parts of the Linux Operating System Kernel." bears parallels to the current allegations of inappropriate and copyright infringing use of parts of the linux header files.
The fourth case tried to make the claim that the GPL was a contract, and not a license, which would have impacted what the GPL could actually do. Again, if someone's looking for evidence of how the courts treat the GPL, or if they even acknowledge the validity of the GPL, it's worth looking at.
If you can find better examples, I'd appreciate it. Of course, the best examples are about unprotected elements of copyright, as expressed elsewhere, but that wasn't what the poster was asking.
no. youre just ... wrong.
the presentation of the facts DOES NOT EXIST WITHOUT THE FACTS. im not trying to spin anything.
go read : Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991) and educate yourself.
besides, i'll probably send a copy of this thread around to my colleagues anyway. they should have a good laugh at your expense.
i work for jones day but you may not have heard of us.
Re Feist
The Supremes say you are full of it.
The Feist decision only extended copyright to the layout, not the underlying facts.
I've heard of Jones, Day - if you work for them, maybe in the mail room, but certainly not as a lawyer. Or are you now going to say that the Supremes got it wrong?
You're wrong, and you just keep giving me more ammunition to shoot you down with every time. You're as bad as Florian Mueller.
Writing a license and knowing exactly how a court of law will interpret that license are two entirely different things. We now may know the intent of the license, but until it's tested in court, that intent means nothing.
Here, let me fix that for you ...
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/09/24/1316220/GPL-Wins-In-French-Court-Case
http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/7145/1/
http://gpl-violations.org/news/20060922-dlink-judgement_frankfurt.html
http://www.fsf.org/news/wallace-vs-fsf
Half are below average? 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 11 What is the average of these numbers? What percentage of them is below that average? (Answers: 2, and 90%)
On average, people have less than 2 feet :-)
this is wrong. facts are copyrightable because the layout and organization of the facts can be copyrighted
And this is wrong. ONLY the layout and organization of the facts, not the fact themselves, are copyrightable.
No matter how you spin it, you are wrong. Facts are not copyrightable. So when you try to spin it yet again by claiming:
no. the presentation AND the facts are the protected element in all scenarios. the presentation is not independent of the facts. the copyright to a work is the whole work. the presentation cannot be applied to a new set of facts and be protected. it would form a new work.
e.g. bob takes alices presentation from alices protected work. puts in a new set of facts. copyright belongs to bob not to alice.
e.g. alice takes bobs facts. puts em into a whole new presentation. copyright belongs to alice not bob.
... this is simply not true. The facts are not a protected element in ANY scenario. The copyright does not protect "the work as a whole", even if it is issued against the whole work. It only protects those elements that are copyrightable, the same as someone may copyright their version of the dictionary, but that doesn;t give them copyright to the word definitions, just the layout, the frontispiece, the endpapers, and any other unique creative content.
Not only that, but your first example, bob is guilty of infringing alice's copyrights on the presentation of the facts, which is a protected element.
So quit trying to claim you're a lawyer. Or if you are, stop posting anon so we can email a copy of this thread to all your colleagues for the lulz.
That quote mentions programs that "use kernel services by normal system calls". Nothing is said about actually including kernel headers.
The code for that is in the headers :-)
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 :-)
You stated that you can copyright facts. You cannot.
The presentation is the only protected element in all your scenarios. The presentation could be applied to new sets of facts, and the presentation, but not the facts, would still be protected.
Compilation works are a different matter, in that the creativity is in the compilation, not the individual facts. Someone can still use the same facts to create a different compilation. Any lawyer would know the difference.
Who else is fed up by Florian Mueller's antics?
I sense a new slashdot poll
What do you think of Florian Mueller's antics?
[_] Florian Mueller's blog is the new goatse link. "Oww! My MIND! Quick, get the brain bleach!"
[X] I just want to know who's paying for it.
[_] "I'm an anonymous coward and I approve" -- Florian Mueller
[_] "Damn, forgot to check 'Post Anonymously' -- Florian Mueller
[_] Hey, it generates page hits and sells ads -- editors
[_] I am Steve Ballmer and I approve of Florian Mueller's antics
[_] In Soviet Russia, everyone trolls Florian Mueller.
[_] Florian Mueller had an original idea that wasn't a troll. It died of loneliness.
[_] A grue ate him. Nothing of consequence was lost.
[_] 104% of 42 respondents preferred CowboyNeal.
This latest attempt to generate FUD pretty much seals the deal - his 15 minutes are SO over.
So, using the headers to access kernel services does not create a derivative work.
This is over and above that the files in question have been stripped of copyrightable content.