[TUHS] History of cal(1)?

[Ron Natalie via TUHS]

You can claim copyright for the C code that defines the superblock 
(i.e., the header), but the layout of the superblock itself is not 
something that can be protected by copyright.



------ Original Message ------
>From "segaloco via TUHS" <tuhs at tuhs.org>
To "The Eunuchs Hysterical Society" <tuhs at tuhs.org>
Date 9/25/2025 10:08:38 PM
Subject [TUHS] Re: History of cal(1)?

>On Thursday, September 25th, 2025 at 17:23, jason-tuhs--- via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
>
>>  > Heck; at one time the "true" command was a Shell script with a huge
>>  > copyright notice, followed by... nothing... (The "false" script
>>  > actually had "exit 1" at the end.)
>>
>>
>>  From http://web.42.net/true.html
>>
>>  ==========================================================================
>>  cat /bin/true
>>
>>  # Copyright (c) 1984, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989 AT&T;
>>  # All Rights Reserved
>>
>>  # THIS IS UNPUBLISHED PROPRIETARY SOURCE CODE OF AT&T;
>>  # The copyright notice above does not evidence any
>>  # actual or intended publication of such source code.
>>
>>  #ident "@(#)true.sh 1.6 93/01/11 SMI" /* SVr4.0 1.4 */
>>
>>
>>
>>  I'm not sure what I like most. The fact that they're claiming strict
>>  copyright on a file that is all comments? The fact that they're up to
>>  version 1.6 of all-comments, after five years of development? Or the fact
>>  that the GNU version had to be rewritten (due to the above copyright), and
>>  thus actually offers three times as much functionality?
>>
>>  ==========================================================================
>>
>>
>>  -Jason
>
>So assuming the whole text of the program after the copyright statement itself as well as the source control statements is truly AT&T property...does that mean AT&T lays copyright to the empty file?  I jest but it is an interesting suggestion.
>
>It also brought to mind the question of whether a UNIX superblock for instance could be placed under copyright?  The files on the disk, sure, but since you can't easily put elaborate license comments at the top of the filesystem itself, is filesystem metadata inherently "un-copyright-able"?  Mostly interested in UNIX filesystems on this subject but if other systems or general wisdom prevail in the discussion then that bit can fork to COFF.
>
>- Matt G.