Re: [Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

[Keld Simonsen <keld@keldix.com>]

On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 11:44:25AM +0000, pasky at ucw dot cz wrote:
> http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213
> 
> --- Comment #17 from Petr Baudis <pasky at ucw dot cz> 2012-07-16 11:44:25 UTC ---
> Keld, I certainly agree that there is a lot of creativity in the way you
> designed the locales specification. However, to me that would imply a copyright
> on the specification and copyright on the implementation. Individual localedata
> files that simply follow the pre-defined format and contain commonly known
> facts seem to be a different matter to me?
> 
> The compilation copyright seems like a more serious issue.
> 
> (Anyhow, I'm not a lawyer so this is an argument I don't want to get into. I'm
> looking to a statement from someone at FSF/SFLC.)

I did not create the original POSIX specification of locale and charmap formats,
one of the main people behind that was Gary Miller, and for the sorting Greger Leijonhufvud. 
I was the main contributor for the ISO TR 14652 extensions. 

Anyway what I wrote for POSIX.2 was the localedata - not the specification of the formats.
This was what later became the da_DK and the i18n locales - that is pure localedata data.
And there was a lot of design and creativity in that. So it is not just the design 
that has work height - also the *data* has.

Then filling in data in the locale format - how much work height is there in that?
I don't know. I think it may be that same problem of how much creativity there is in
providing patches in general to OSS. Is it just a spelling creation? Or what?
I once provided a patch of just 1 line to the Linux kernel. It took quite some research and
some imagnation how to do it and development of new of theory,
and I probably could have patented that mechanism.
In some cases that patch could speed up performance with 50 %
So you cannot judge work height by the size of the contribution.

best regards
keld