Is linux free 5012

Er, didn't *I* just get through referring to the "Rural Telephone Service

Be careful: The term "compilation" is yet another term of art in copyright law. It means a collection and arrangement by party A of (and reification of party A's property interest in that collection and arrangement) works that themselves are owned by parties B, C, etc. The clbuttic example would be the property interest that an anthology editor enjoys in his work picking, arranging, and laying out a set of stories by other people.

If authors B, C, etc., were to attempt to reprint the volume without recompensing editor A for his work, they would be committing the tort of copyright violation to the extent of the compilation copyright owned by A.

The "Feist" decision held that Rural did not enjoy compilation copyright over its white pages listings because the sole "creative" contribution Rural made lay in arranging them in alphabetical order. So, the USSC ruled that, to quote Justice O'Connor:

"To be sure, the requisite level of creativity is extremely low; even a slight amount will suffice. The vast majority of works make the grade quite easily, as they possess some creative spark, "no matter how crude, humble or obvious" it might be."

Other jurisdictions' standards may differ (and I offer my neighbourly apology for not being familiar with what might prevail in B.C.), but, at least in the USA, the bar for successfully claiming a compilation copyright is really, really low. Such as, maybe, picking which codebases do and do not go into your distribution, arranging their documentation into FHS-compliant form, etc.

(In the case of RH, Inc., they state that their compilation copyright if any shall be considered to be under GPLv2, anyway, so there's not really much to argue about.)

-- Cheers, Chip Salzenberg: "Usenet is not a right." Rick Moen Edward Vielmetti: "Usenet is a right, a left, a jab, The postman hits! You have new mail."