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The /bin/true Command and Copyright (2009)

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Re: The /bin/true Command and Copyright (2009)

#51

Post by michaelt »

jzwinck wrote: post #48
viseztrance wrote: post #46

> The /bin/true (or /usr/bin/true) command is now nearly obsolete, because most extant shells now have a builtin "true" command. But it's still useful occasionally, for various silly reasons [...] This make it sound like this is useless, but I disagree. For example, recently I had some games crash because they couldn't find pulseaudio, and making a symlink from pulseaudio to /bin/true fixed my issue (and yes, they ha…

Instead of a symlink to true you could have made an empty script.

And violate AT&T's copyright? Perish the thought!

Re: The /bin/true Command and Copyright (2009)

#52

Post by paulddraper »

smallnamespace wrote: post #41
paulddraper wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those aren't at all analogous. The automatic state for content is "protected by copyright," unless a different arrangement is made. The automatic state for contract terms is "not agreed to," unless a different arrangement is made. tl;dr You need proof (written or otherwise) that a contact happened; not so with copyright protection.

Oral contracts are legal and valid, yet most people write down their contracts for good, practical reasons outside of strict legality. Same goes for copyright notices. For example, the notice makes it hard for a violator to use a negligence defense, effectively increasing the penalty for violations.

People write down contracts for proof. Without that, it's dubious if the contract even existed.

But proof is not relevant for a copyright. Even without writing, the existence of the copyright is not in doubt.

Re: The /bin/true Command and Copyright (2009)

#53

Post by viseztrance »

jzwinck wrote: post #48
viseztrance wrote: post #46

> The /bin/true (or /usr/bin/true) command is now nearly obsolete, because most extant shells now have a builtin "true" command. But it's still useful occasionally, for various silly reasons [...] This make it sound like this is useless, but I disagree. For example, recently I had some games crash because they couldn't find pulseaudio, and making a symlink from pulseaudio to /bin/true fixed my issue (and yes, they ha…

Instead of a symlink to true you could have made an empty script.

Well the symlink command was also easier to share with others having the same issue, whereas a one liner that creates an executable script which returns 0 is less ideal.

Re: The /bin/true Command and Copyright (2009)

#54

Post by orra »

cperciva wrote: post #13
bdowling wrote: post #9

Adding copyright notices to every source code file is reasonable because it costs next to nothing. Figuring out what is copyrightable, on the other hand, is expensive, because it requires lawyers, and a waste of time because lawyers' answers are always "it depends". You never actually know how enforceable your copyright claim is until you actually litigate, which is REALLY expensive.

Adding copyright notices to every source code file is also pointless, since copyright notices are no longer required to obtain copyright protection.

Indeed. That said, it's worth noting the files in the article predate that. The US didn't join the Berne convention until 1 March 1989.

Re: The /bin/true Command and Copyright (2009)

#55

Post by cmeacham98 »

viseztrance wrote: post #53
jzwinck wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of a symlink to true you could have made an empty script.

Well the symlink command was also easier to share with others having the same issue, whereas a one liner that creates an executable script which returns 0 is less ideal.

An empty script returns 0 by default, thus `touch /path/to/missing/library` is a sufficient (and shorter!) one-liner fix to this problem.

Re: The /bin/true Command and Copyright (2009)

#56

Post by viseztrance »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #55
viseztrance wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the symlink command was also easier to share with others having the same issue, whereas a one liner that creates an executable script which returns 0 is less ideal.

An empty script returns 0 by default, thus `touch /path/to/missing/library` is a sufficient (and shorter!) one-liner fix to this problem.

I know, but you still have to make it executable, hence it's not as convenient.

And on top of this, an unlink is less error prone than a rm -f.

Re: The /bin/true Command and Copyright (2009)

#57

Post by lamontcg »

kodah wrote: post #3

The one confusing thing to me about this is that you're not supposed to append copyright years to a notice when the contents have not changed, yet this script got copyrighted all the way to 1989.

We used to do this at work. Then someone bumped the date in every file. I can point to PRs that copypasta'd old dates in from people who copied the notice from deeply ancient source files and claimed a copyright date ages in the past. Or files that were updated and nobody bothered to bump the date.

As a result I ripped out all the dates, with the blessing of our legal department, because they were next to useless. We've got a git history and while the dates there aren't perfectly tamper and error free, they're vastly better than all the nonsense we had our headers.

Pretty sure these dates are a software development legal cargo cult and would encourage anyone who disagrees with me to actually sit down with their legal council and go over the issues and publish a nice medium article if you think I'm wrong. And make sure to spell out issues like this one which opposing council would be sure to use where the date bumping on /bin/true is a clear violation of policy. At best it seems legally useless and at worst you've got a policy that opposing council can probably slam dunk prove that you are not following.

Re: The /bin/true Command and Copyright (2009)

#58

Post by zeven7 »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #43
Miiko wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Patents do not require actual copying to infringe, but copyright does. In other words, if you use Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V to copy these blank lines, then you infringe AT&T copyright. If you don't and add blank lines by other means - you don't ;)

No. You can copy without copy-and-paste. But, a blank line isn't enough to be a creative work.

As long as it wasn't a blank line typed by John Cage ;)

Re: The /bin/true Command and Copyright (2009)

#59

Post by kbutler »

paulddraper wrote: post #52
smallnamespace wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oral contracts are legal and valid, yet most people write down their contracts for good, practical reasons outside of strict legality. Same goes for copyright notices. For example, the notice makes it hard for a violator to use a negligence defense, effectively increasing the penalty for violations.

People write down contracts for proof. Without that, it's dubious if the contract even existed. But proof is not relevant for a copyright. Even without writing, the existence of the copyright is not in doubt.

But the owner of the copyright is.

Re: The /bin/true Command and Copyright (2009)

#60

Post by Sebb767 »

smallnamespace wrote: post #41
paulddraper wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those aren't at all analogous. The automatic state for content is "protected by copyright," unless a different arrangement is made. The automatic state for contract terms is "not agreed to," unless a different arrangement is made. tl;dr You need proof (written or otherwise) that a contact happened; not so with copyright protection.

Oral contracts are legal and valid, yet most people write down their contracts for good, practical reasons outside of strict legality. Same goes for copyright notices. For example, the notice makes it hard for a violator to use a negligence defense, effectively increasing the penalty for violations.

Negligence is not applicable in this case, as, like the comment above pointed out, the default state is copyrighted.

It's a bit like putting a "stealing this car is illegal"-sticker on your car - sure, you made that clear, but "I didn't know stealing this car was illegal" is not going to fly as a defense either way.

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