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Re: Extending xm_defines syntax to get rid of more xm-files
- To: dewar at gnat dot com
- Subject: Re: Extending xm_defines syntax to get rid of more xm-files
- From: Joe Buck <jbuck at racerx dot synopsys dot com>
- Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 09:04:59 -0800 (PST)
- Cc: pfeifer at dbai dot tuwien dot ac dot at, zackw at stanford dot edu, gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org, ghazi at caip dot rutgers dot edu
Robert Dewar writes:
> There is no such thing as a "fair use threshold". That is a legal fiction.
> There is a principle of de minimums, but that involves importance
> as well as length. It is very easy for a single line of code to be
> critical and fully protectable (there are court cases that have hinged on
> VERY small sections of code).
Yes, in theory What about practice?
Since there has never been a court case, what matters here is what the FSF
is willing to accept and defend. For those purposes, a rather fuzzy
limit, on the order of 10 simple lines, would, according to RMS, meet the
cut. However, an extremely clever 7-line program to decode CSS-encoded
DVDs would not. If we can't resolve the argument, we let RMS decide it,
since he will have to defend the FSF in court if needed.