[Bug localedata/11213] localedata licencing issues

["tg at mirbsd dot de" <sourceware-bugzilla@sourceware.org>]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11213

--- Comment #18 from Thorsten Glaser <tg at mirbsd dot de> 2012-07-16 13:13:31 UTC ---
Keld, while you may have had a lot of “sweat of brow”, in the end, the locale
data (in the one file I looked at) is mere fact, and there is, basically, only
one way to express such facts using the format glibc expects. This is, at
least, under the EU interoperability directive, not copyrightable (neither are
*.h files, unless they include insane amounts of inline functions, by the way).
As for the USA, you probably know that better than I do, but the work, while it
may have cost you a lot of creativity, is mostly “sweat of brow”, to express
the fact that way. You may have designed the interface, the character naming
convention, etc. but these are interfaces, not works in the sense of copyright.
I really do not want you to lose any attribution of that, but I don’t believe
the (one file I looked at with) locale information as shown is not
copyrightable.

“something that could have been patentetd”[sic] is of different scope than
copyright relevant work. I also fear you could probably have patented it, but
not put it under copyright protection. (Jonathan, mere effort is also not
enough in Germany, although USA’s “sweat of brow” doctrine is a tad stronger.
Still, we’re facing interoperability interfaces here, and mere fact; the
currency of the USA is the Dollar, no matter what.)

The presentation and combination of the data may, may, be affected by copyright
or even database law, true. I guess SFLC and, if possible, international
lawyers could have a look at that.

I laud your attempt to keep quality, but IMHO, using legal matters for that is
not the way to go. You could run a “locale data repository”, from which e.g.
glibc could then pull, for that, like tzdata.

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