question about copying small amounts of code from BSD, MIT or Apache 1.1 licensed open source...

[Lawrence Rosen]

John Cowan wrote:
> You guys are lawyers and I'm not, so I'll say what needs saying.
> Using a snippet like that is almost certainly either fair use or
> de minimis, and nobody using the BSD license is likely to be a
> fanatic about it.  Even the FSF explicitly doesn't care about ten
> GPLed lines or less.

John's right. Rod Dixon said pretty much the same thing in an email earlier
today:
> Does the snippet of code constitute
> copyrightable expression? Is it subject to fair use? etc. The answers to
> these questions cannot be answered in the abstract.

/Larry Rosen

Lawrence Rosen
Rosenlaw & Einschlag, technology law offices (www.rosenlaw.com)
3001 King Ranch Road, Ukiah, CA 95482
707-485-1242  ●  fax: 707-485-1243
Author of “Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom 
               and Intellectual Property Law” (Prentice Hall 2004)