[J-core] json instructions set

[Rob Landley]

On 06/26/2017 07:12 PM, Cedric BAIL wrote:
> As I know there will be discussion regarding the license, it is
> currently under GPLv3, but it can be relicensed to whatever any one
> really prefer. I don't think this work is impacted by the original
> license of the code that generate
> http://www.shared-ptr.com/sh_insns.html (GPLv3 doesn't apply on the
> output of the program and you can run that program locally).

Rich thinks I worry too much about this stuff, but you said you expected
a discussion, so...

What's your basis for saying the license doesn't apply to the program's
output? I didn't run the compiler, therefore the license doesn't apply
to binary the compiler created? I didn't run the PDF display program,
therefore these screen shots of pages of the latest bestseller aren't
copyrighted?

There is so much domain expertise here. I'm a programmer, but I don't do
.net on windows, nor do I currently have the domain expertise to
optimize a 3D pipeline on modern hardware. Cryptographers refusing to
let other developers touch openssl gave us heartbleed (because the
cryptographers weren't great programmers), but then again programmers
who don't understand cryptography open a zillion side-channel attacks
when they touch anything. Even within the "Linux in C" domain, when
userspace developers write kernel code the kernel guys throw up on it,
and when kernel guys write userspace code you get the lovely user
interface on "git".

Laywers have their own domain expertise, and would roll their eyes at
other lawyers who _don't_ specialize in intellectual property law (or in
a different jurisdiction) giving opinions about that domain. Now imagine
what they think when non-lawyers confidently make legal pronouncements
about licensing.

In this case, we didn't provide our own input, so any output the program
produced had to come from material shipped with that project. The output
is a derived work of the input, and we didn't provide the input, so it's
not like arguing that microsoft doesn't have a copyright on a doctoral
thesis written in word and saved as a .doc file (because word merely
mechanically transformed the copyrightable input, and provided no
original material copyright could attach to, although courts have held
that limericks are copyrightable and then people tried to put them in
network protocols and then the DMCA added a safe harbor provision for
reverse engineering for interoperability and... here, read
https://www.eff.org/issues/coders/reverse-engineering-faq).

Now it's _possible_ that you've extracted only facts from a "compilation
of facts", and that neither the organization of the facts nor the
selection of which facts to include in your new compilation is
influenced by the original in a copyrightable way:

https://copyright.uslegal.com/enumerated-categories-of-copyrightable-works/compilations-of-fact/

Yes you can have copyrights on compilations of fact:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street are one way to let people sue
over exactly this sort of thing. It might not apply _here_, but I can't
make that call. Even with 15 years of "interested poking around" in IP
law (including being the plaintiff in software license enforcement
lawsuits on multiple continents, and a couple years of working for
lawyers as a domain expert in a fairly high profile case), I can only
GUESS at that sort of thing and would totally ask a real lawyer for a
professional opinion (basically a code review/audit from a security
expert familiar with this domain).

And I haven't a _clue_ how this differs in Canada and Japan...

Rob

P.S. I'm not just worried about the original author suing us, I'd also
worry about some troll digging this up and waving it at a judge as an
example of "you were sloppy over here, therefore you're more likely to
have been sloppy over in this area I'm suing you about". The microchip
world is awash with litigation once large quantities of money get
involved, and we'd like to scale up to there someday so we keep our nose
clean now. Frustratingly so at times, but there you have it...

P.P.S. http://blog.icreon.us/advise/web-scraping-legality and
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/31/google-fair-use-victory-oracle-software-androids
probably work in here too.