[Ffmpeg-devel] overall license review - adding proper license headers

[Rich Felker]

On Tue, Sep 05, 2006 at 05:09:45PM +0200, Reimar D?ffinger wrote:
> Hello,
> On Tue, Sep 05, 2006 at 04:00:12PM +0200, Diego Biurrun wrote:
> > On Mon, Sep 04, 2006 at 09:20:23AM -0400, Rich Felker wrote:
> > > I'm strongly in favor of removing license/copyright bs from all of
> > > them, otherwise it just strengthens the misconception that files like
> > > this can be copyrighted.
> > 
> > I tend to agree, but to be completely honest, I don't think it's worth
> > the time.  This whole licensing review has been a bit of an effort
> 
> I do not agree at all. It is not evident that these files will be
> non-copyrightable in all jurisdictions and forever, courts tend
> to change their opinions on stuff that has only crappily written laws to
> support them...
> If we really believe they aren't IMHO the only other acceptable way
> would be to explicitly say that we do not consider them to be
> copyrightable preferably with a fallback if somewhen they are considered
> that regardless of our opinions.

Fallback is totally impossible, that's why they're not copyrightable.
It's like a table of population data. Any other values but the "right"
ones would be wrong and thus useless so you can't copyright it.

Rich