Looking for Design Patterns for complex interactive applications with multiple views? Take a look at the thesis work of John Vlissides, one of the Gang of Four: http://www.ivtools.org/ivtools/unidrawinfo.html
Right, the entire book with yellow pages ads and introductory pages and layout is copyrighted. And the facts contained within, the names and numbers are not.
In the case of this header file the position and type of each datum in the structure is a statement of fact. You could argue that the names given the members of the structure, and the documentation for each are a copyrightable "expression of an idea". But they too seem (or should be) nothing more than a concise description of something that already existed, a fact.
Also in this case a struct is more than source code, it's a user interface. And if I remember Apple v Microsoft right, it ain't that easy to copyright a user interface.
Sure, reverse engineering can yield more than an interface definition, but it seems this reverse engineering activity did nothing more than that. If it is anyone's IP it is the IP of the original engineers of the device. But why go there? An interface like this is a simple statement of fact (one that the original engineers could have published), and in my opinion is protected by fair use (and in the opinion of the courts as long as you leave DCMA out of the picture).
It looks like the header file in question is a factual list of the interface to this device discovered by reverse engineering, and its creation and reuse by both the BSD and Linux programmers should fall under the fair-use clause of copyright law. It might be plagiarism to not give credit in the derivative header files, but the Linux programmers would not have been required to preserve the copyright notice in this case.
It seems the original BSD author had a fair-use right to reverse engineer the data-structures, and the Linux authors had a fair-use right to use his work without preserving the copyright. Why? Because you can't copyright a simple list of facts, and if you do, others can use it under fair use. For example, the list of names and numbers in the phonebook are available to anybody to republish without crediting the original compilers, because of fair-use (or at least things used to be this way with copyright law, and why push things the other way?).
Slashdot Mirror
Looking for Design Patterns for complex interactive applications with multiple views? Take a look at the thesis work of John Vlissides, one of the Gang of Four: http://www.ivtools.org/ivtools/unidrawinfo.html
pstoedit converts PostScript and PDF to several editable vector-graphic formats: http://home.t-online.de/home/helga.glunz/wglunz/ps toedit/
In the case of this header file the position and type of each datum in the structure is a statement of fact. You could argue that the names given the members of the structure, and the documentation for each are a copyrightable "expression of an idea". But they too seem (or should be) nothing more than a concise description of something that already existed, a fact.
Also in this case a struct is more than source code, it's a user interface. And if I remember Apple v Microsoft right, it ain't that easy to copyright a user interface.
Sure, reverse engineering can yield more than an interface definition, but it seems this reverse engineering activity did nothing more than that. If it is anyone's IP it is the IP of the original engineers of the device. But why go there? An interface like this is a simple statement of fact (one that the original engineers could have published), and in my opinion is protected by fair use (and in the opinion of the courts as long as you leave DCMA out of the picture).
It looks like the header file in question is a factual list of the interface to this device discovered by reverse engineering, and its creation and reuse by both the BSD and Linux programmers should fall under the fair-use clause of copyright law. It might be plagiarism to not give credit in the derivative header files, but the Linux programmers would not have been required to preserve the copyright notice in this case.
It seems the original BSD author had a fair-use right to reverse engineer the data-structures, and the Linux authors had a fair-use right to use his work without preserving the copyright. Why? Because you can't copyright a simple list of facts, and if you do, others can use it under fair use. For example, the list of names and numbers in the phonebook are available to anybody to republish without crediting the original compilers, because of fair-use (or at least things used to be this way with copyright law, and why push things the other way?).