Quanah Gibson-Mount wrote:
Debian sez:
This is factually false. Recipes cannot be copyrighted, nor can interface specifications, nor can telephone books, except to the degree that a compilation copyright applies.
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl122.html http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#102
Mere listings of ingredients cannot be copyrighted, but recipes which include literary expression in the form of an explanation or directions can be copyrighted.
I couldn't find anything that pertains to interface specifications in any of the text for the laws.
things can be distributed according to the License granted by the
copyright holder.
Debian sez:
Yes, and the license in this case is non-free, so it's good that the material wasn't copyrightable in the first place.
If there's an exception in the copyright law that supports this statement, it ought to be easy for the Debian folks to provide the reference.
Personally I think most of the copyright law is broken and needs to be overhauled, but that's a side issue. Notice in 102(b)
(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.
Computer programs are nothing but collections of procedures, and yet an exception seems to have been made somewhere (I don't know where) allowing them to be copywritten. Bitmap fonts apparently are excluded from protection, which is why Adobe invented Postscript Type1 fonts, which are actually collections of Postscript programs, in order to gain copyright protection for their fonts.