Copyrighting trivial code

Jordan Hayes jordan at ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU
Thu Jan 22 05:59:18 AEST 1987


Roy Smith <roy at phri.UUCP> asks:

	The obvious question is whether the copyright notice means
	anything.  Can one really copyright something which is so
	straightforward, trivial, and obvious?

#include <sys/disclaim.h>

It was put there as part of the effort to "clean up" all the code in
the 4BSD release which included putting copyright notices and SCCS info
on everything, regardless of size.  I think any lawyer would have a
difficult time doing anything about you using that one-line of code,
but it would be harder for CSRG to make the determination of what they
should or should not have copyrighted, due to size ...

/jordan



More information about the Comp.unix.wizards mailing list