Can someone copyright a set of CFLAGS?

vipernicus

This is referring to a post BobP, creater of Jackass! made. He seems to believe that he can copyright everything. What is your take on this?

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-333123-start-175.html
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Chaosite · Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2006 4:05 pm Post subject:

IANAL, so I'm not touching this one with a 500 foot pole.

Both are you are being anal here, though.

ekz · Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2006 4:33 pm Post subject:

Can someone copyright a set of CFLAGS?

:evil:

Sounds BAD!!
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R.I.P. · Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2006 4:57 pm Post subject:

Tiger683 · Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2006 7:35 pm Post subject:

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geniux · Veteran Joined: 19 Feb 2004 Posts: 1400 Location: /home

playfool · Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2006 7:51 pm Post subject:

In theory he can copyright the document in it's entirety. By default in the US everything from the post-it note you put on your monitor to a DVD movie is copyrighted, so BobP clearly plagerised the copyrighted work done by the Gentoo Foundation.

I think this is a non-issue, BobP is probably just looking for attribution for his part in the projects.

If it's a big issue I can write up some cleanroom make.conf files for the various CPUs, and put them under a CC license, I have not seen the Jackass! files.

Naib · Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2006 8:20 pm Post subject:

/me loves living in Europe

in all honesty tho these CFLAGS have already been documented, they will be listed in the GCC man pages for starters. ALL BobP has done is pulled together the infomation. For this *Uneque* document he could say he has copyright over it, BUT he does not have copyright over CFLAGS

soulds like BobP is like SCO with alot less money or MS-backing
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mikegpitt · Advocate Joined: 22 May 2004 Posts: 3224

I'm thinking no.

From trademark.gov:

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#wwp

Garfield_the_Cat · n00b Joined: 21 Mar 2005 Posts: 1

enderandrew · l33t Joined: 25 Oct 2005 Posts: 731

The funny thing is that in regard to that particular comment, the flags were not exact, or copy-pasted.

They were similiar to his, so he assumed that someone was copying his work and failing at it. God forbid someone else hav a similiar idea.

That is not only arrogant, but silly.

I made the mistake of downloading one of his tarballs as a starting point. Even though I didn't use his guide, and I changed all the flags, and built a whole new toolchain with custom patches I've thrown in, my computer has Rockhopper popping up all over it every time I log in via console, or do an emerge --info.

My computer is not a Rockhopper build. I just wanted to start with any tarball that had a GCC 4.x build to start from as opposed to upgrading from GCC 3.x to start with. I've never even read his guides because of how antagonistic I've routinely see him be to people who've asked him for help.
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ali3nx · Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2006 3:55 am Post subject:

sounds like complete bollocks to me considering his first stage3 install tutorial was based on my own stage1 developers method tutorial :wink:

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nesl247 · Veteran Joined: 15 Jun 2004 Posts: 1614 Location: Florida

theJackalnz · n00b Joined: 05 Oct 2005 Posts: 32

Even if he claims he was the first to use a specific set of CFLAGS ( in a certain order at that mind), I would still classify as derivative works / plagurisim / theft of any original CFLAGS combinations that he would have seen.

Unless of course, the ONLY CFLAGS reference was the GCC manual, and only one CFLAG was specified at a time, and he was like "OMG,. GENIUS.. I SHOULD USE THESE CFLAGS TOGETHER AND COMBINE THEIR BENEFITS" .. and was the first to do so , then he MIGHT have something worth claiming.

Otherwise.. its al BS .

a CFLAG string with 7 variables is hardly something unique, if it were, every time you typed a character you would be breaking the copyright patent on every other litereary document that contains characters which contain 7 or more bits. But the added Irony is, all those documents would also clash with each others copyrights too, and as such, no bugger would ever write anything cos the patent police would sue their ass

* gets arrested and dragged out by patent police*

ali3nx · Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2006 6:52 am Post subject:

luddite · n00b Joined: 18 May 2005 Posts: 38

I don't get it. What's the big deal? The way the GPL and Creative Commons licenses work, an author is REQUIRED to copyright something in order to have the right to release it under the GPL or a Creative Commons License. From what I can tell, that's exactly what he did: LINK.

broken_chaos · Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2006 10:56 am Post subject:

The point is he's trying to claim ownership of a certain set of CFLAGS. They're not exactly an original work - they're more like putting the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together. You put them together in a certain way, and you make something new. And the 'style' of setting one CFLAG per line is HARDLY unique. It's useful if you tend to change CFLAGS quite a bit, or sometimes need to disable one quickly - just comment out any given line. I've seen that style of CFLAGS, and other variables (such as USE, PORTDIR_OVERLAY, and even GENTOO_MIRRORS) from many people's posted make.conf's - it's not unique, and it's a good idea if you need to change things quickly (and don't like typing alot - particularly for the PORTDIR_OVERLAY usage, if you have multiple overlays).

I say it's completely idiotic to say a set of CFLAGS, even in a particular order, even formatted a certain way is copyrightable in any way whatsoever. I bet that at least several thousand people have the same CFLAGS as I do (they're quite basic ones - --march=pentium4 -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe), but I'm hardly breaking anyone's copyright by having them, and no one is breaking my copyright for the simple reason that they are uncopyrightable.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2006 11:08 am Post subject:

vipernicus,

BobP is not claiming copyright of a set of CFLAGS. He claims copyright of the document that they are listed in, the two things are quite seperate. Indeed, if BobP wrote the document, then the copyright is his unless he assigns it.
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Naib · Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2006 12:04 pm Post subject:

plus anyway IF bobP really did just "copyright" the document so that it could be release under the GPL, why was he making a fuss that someone is using GPL material?
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vipernicus · Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 3:29 pm Post subject:

Thanks for your posts. Looks to me that it is not possible to copyright CFLAGS, though there were a couple who believe that you should be able to. Interesting results.
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chunderbunny · Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 9:11 pm Post subject:

RuiP · l33t Joined: 15 Jan 2005 Posts: 643

cwest · n00b Joined: 13 Jun 2005 Posts: 72 Location: Oslo, Norway

GPL.

He can't take freedoms from users when he derives something from stuff licensed under a copyleft license.

So, no, he can't copyright his custom CFLAGS.

Edit:
"Can't copyright" in the sense of "can't take freedoms from users". International copyright law allready makes you copyright any stuff you create ...
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