"One of the fun examples among all the copyright fuss is the extreme example of copyright claims made by AT&T some time in the 1980s. It's the /bin/true program. This is a dummy' library program whose main function is to make it easy to write infinite loops (while true do ...) in shells scripts. The 'true' program does nothing; it merely exits with a zero exit status. This can be done with an empty file that's marked executable, and that's what it was in the earliest unix system libraries. Such an empty file will be interpreted as a shell script that does nothing, and since it does this successfully, the shell exits with a zero exit status. But AT&T's lawyers decided that this was worthy of copyright protection." Three blank lines. Copyrighted. You can't make this stuff up.
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Member since:
2009-03-25
Okay, fair enough, this is worthy of a small chuckle. But it certainly isn't worthy of the anti-copyright rhetoric in this article.
What's happened here? It's obvious: They've simply run a script that appends their copyright message to the begining of every file in their source code.
Hardly an unusual thing to do.
The fact that it results in oddities like this is fairly irrelevant. And it certainly doesn't imply anything about the concept of copyright.
Member since:2008-07-12
Except the idea of a copyright on a empty file suggest THEY were not doing their due diligence on what they slapped their copyright onto.
This is the sort of thing you expect from SCO not AT&T. Plus it raises questions about how valid their other copyright statements are and companies like SCO can cause you to waste a ton of money because of a careless slip like this.
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2009-09-03
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2008-07-12
Member since:2005-07-24
Also while I don't have my Micro magazines with me to check - did not OS9 also have this feature?
It's a copyright, not a patent.
If you re-implement an existing program, you're free to copyright your implementation. Obviously that copyright does not prevent others from re-implementing the same software, again.
Member since:2005-07-22
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2006-07-25
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Reminds me of this.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/microsoft-patents-ones-zeroes,599/
Member since:2006-06-09
Member since:
2005-07-24
On my system, 'true' is a 16K ELF executable. From 'man true':
GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
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2006-07-26
Member since:2005-07-24
If you take a file and add text to it, the resulting file is a derivative of the original file, yes.
No, copyright does not work like that: copyright protects against copying, but (unlike patents) not against others who independently come up with the same thing.
Member since:2006-07-26
Member since:2006-01-01
You can't copyright an empty file. You can put a copyright header on an empty file but that means nothing.
In US Copyright law defines a computer program as ...
"A “computer program” is a set of statements or instructions to be used directly or indirectly in a computer in order to bring about a certain result."
Obviously, there are no statements or instructions in an empty file and even if there was just a single line copyright law would probably not protect the work because I could obviously come up with that line independently (which is perfectly ok to do under copyright law).
Edited 2012-01-30 23:38 UTC
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2010-12-22
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2006-01-01
1) /bin/true is copyright on all systems, including gnu/linux systems
2) you can't copyright nothing (an old /bin/true script) so this is likely a doc bug in the old systems
3) your just making shit up to rant about - why don't you just save the rage for ACTA which deserves it
Member since:2005-07-06
