Forking instead of fighting [LWN.net]

Forking instead of fighting

Posted Aug 31, 2014 11:14 UTC (Sun) by niner (guest, #26151)
In reply to: Forking instead of fighting by giraffedata
Parent article: Forking instead of fighting

Not exactly. Not every source code and thus not every patch is even copyrightable. It has to be complex enough to allow the author to express herself. I'd guess a straight forward typo fix for example would not pass this barrier.

Take away is: don't ever make blanket legal statements. Reality is always a bit more complicated than one would assume.

to post comments

Forking instead of fighting

Posted Aug 31, 2014 15:37 UTC (Sun) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link]

You make a good point that law is complex, so simple, blanket statements are almost guaranteed to be incorrect. But if we adopt a rule against making such statements, we can't discuss the law at all, because either every statement gets so full of qualifiers that one can't read it, or people are afraid to say anything because there might be some exception they missed.

So I would turn it around: understand that any blanket legal statement you read probably has numerous exceptions.

I also think it's a wonderful form of discourse for one person to make a basic blanket statement in a forum like this and for others then to refine it with the exceptions.