OSBC: Life at the edge of the GPL

Posted Mar 27, 2009 21:46 UTC (Fri) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330)
Parent article: OSBC: Life at the edge of the GPL

However, Norman says, even minor non-functional aspects of an API, such as the sequence of fields in a structure, are probably copyrightable.

This issue came up in the AT&T vs. University of California lawsuit over BSD, precisely in this form: fields in structures. While IANAL, my understanding is that the court ruled otherwise, that such things are functional and not copyrightable.

OSBC: Life at the edge of the GPL

Posted Mar 28, 2009 7:42 UTC (Sat) by rickmoen (subscriber, #6943) [Link] (3 responses)

Joe, you are exactly right.

Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com

OSBC: Life at the edge of the GPL

Posted Mar 30, 2009 4:53 UTC (Mon) by jeffnorman (guest, #57684) [Link] (2 responses)

No, that is incorrect. The BSD case was about loss of copyright through
failure to include the required copyright notices (a requirement that has
since been abolished). The discussion about the header files applied only
to the trade secret aspect of the case. There are several cases in this
area and none of them is very good. However, on general principles it
should be the case that you can use those portions of an API that are
essential to access and use public interfaces of a library or object. The
problem is, most APIs include far more than such essential interfaces.

Thanks

Posted Apr 1, 2009 3:51 UTC (Wed) by dberkholz (guest, #23346) [Link] (1 responses)

Jeff,

I just wanted to thank you for participating in the discussion here. It's made it infinitely more informative.

Thanks

Posted Apr 2, 2009 5:12 UTC (Thu) by jeffnorman (guest, #57684) [Link]

Your welcome, but I would say the level of discussion without my posts was
already pretty high or I would not have waded in ...thanks really to Don
who managed to accurately capture and encapsulate my talk.

OSBC: Life at the edge of the GPL

Posted Mar 30, 2009 4:11 UTC (Mon) by jeffnorman (guest, #57684) [Link] (2 responses)

Alas, what I said in context was that the sequence and arrangement of otherwise non-copyrightable elements of sufficiently large header file would likely be copyrightable. In other words, even if you could strip the entire set of header files used in a particular API of any copyrightable elements (a task that is a lot more difficult than it would otherwise appear in a modern API that consists of multiple header files, object oriented programming that combines code with "mere" data structures, etc.), the sequence and arrangement of the non-copyrightable information in such header files is likely independently copyrightable. That is why in clean rooms we usually require the creation of a new API.

OSBC: Life at the edge of the GPL

Posted Mar 30, 2009 11:11 UTC (Mon) by mjthayer (guest, #39183) [Link] (1 responses)

So in other words, if you created your own set of header files and your own stub shared libraries for compiling and linking against, with only the most basic knowledge of the implementation required for this task, that the applications linking against them could still count as derivative works? I suppose that this is perfect for people putting their work under the GPL.

OSBC: Life at the edge of the GPL

Posted Mar 30, 2009 14:56 UTC (Mon) by jeffnorman (guest, #57684) [Link]

in a clean room, the "dirty" team will prep a new API spec that will be limited to the specific functionality required, and reviewed by legal to make sure its all non-copyrightable. The "clean" team will then write a new set of headers and stubs from the new spec. This will provide maximum protection (though never perfect) from a derivative works claim. Cumbersome, no doubt.