]] Soren Stoutner > From time to time I hear people make the argument that Debian > packaging is not copyrightable. I personally disagree with that > assessment. Among all the other possible factors for considering that > packaging *is* copyrightable, I think the effort argument is the > easiest to understand.
Depending on your jurisdiction, «Effort», is not, as I understand it, relevant to whether something is copyrightable or not. It's not relevant in the US (per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow#United_States), in the EU you get concept like database rights (which I don't think are particularly relevant to Debian packaging). > When I consider the hours and hours and hours it often takes to get > the contents of debian/* into good shape for proper packaging, I think > it is impossible to argue that so little effort is required, or that > Debian packaging is such an obvious task, or that the results are just > a set of default values that don’t represent any actual labor. That > fact that Debian packaging done well requires so much effort, and that > it takes so long for new packagers to become good at it, is a strong > indication that it is copyrightable. Out of interest, do you think that the output of large language models is copyrightable? -- Tollef Fog Heen UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are
