Copyright status of example code in Bugzilla - how to deal with when writing testcases.

[Robert Dewar]

Zack Weinberg wrote:
> Andrew Pinski <pinskia@physics.uc.edu> writes:
> 
>>The code for these testcases submitted so far are about 12 lines a piece
>>and have almost nothing which can tell where they came from (Other than
>>comments in the code).

> That's probably fine then.  IIRC, previous discussion of this has
> generally come out to 'as long as the worst thing a sane judge would
> ever order is that we delete the test case, we're fine'.

Unfortunately, you can't rely on sane judges, since the plaintiff can
always demand a jury trial, and you would be surprised what juries think.
Furthermore, deleting the test case makes no sense as a remedy. Either
there is or there is not a copyright violation. The judge could only
require the removal of the test case if there is a copyright violation,
but then the plaintiff is entitled to substantial compensation without
having to show any harm.

Of course informally, copyright cases are often settled by requiring
removal of the material, but that's not an outcome that makes sense
in terms of an actual judicial decision.

Still we can't let ourselves get too tied up about copyright, and as
long as a test case meets reasonable requirements (e.g. under Altai)
for non-violation, it's probably fine.

For GNAT, we never ever use submitted customer code in public test
cases without specific clearence from the customer, instead we (where
possible) make an entirely new test.

That being said, I think it would be perfectly reasonable to make a rule
that any code submitted to bugzilla is considered to be public (after all
it is public right away.) Let's just explicitly state this. For an open
development environment, openly submitted bug reports can reasonably be
expected to adhere to this requirement.