Legallity of dtv-scan-tables Was: [RFC] Initial scan files troubles and brainstorming

[Oliver Schinagl <oliver+list@schinagl.nl>]

On 11-01-13 02:12, Jonathan McCrohan wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Jan 2013 21:55:28 +0100, Oliver Schinagl wrote:
>> Actually, there's plenty of apps etc that depend on it. I know some
>> distro's install it into /usr/share/dvb for all to use. I think actually
>> only a very small handfull use their own scanfiles. Very small handfull
>> I belive ;)
> Indeed. I have just gone to file an Intent To Package bug for the
> dtv-scan-tables package in Debian, but I noticed that the COPYING and
> README files were not split out from the dvb-apps tree.
If some have any pointers in what would be logical in the readme, i'll 
whip one up this afternoon.

but copying is an interesting point.
>
> Logically it would follow that dtv-scan-tables is also licenced under
> LGPL, the same as dvb-apps, but this needs to be stated explicitly.
> This is especially true for distributions which be redistributing
> dtv-scan-tables.
I don't think it is that logical actually. Remember the ntpd fiasco a 
few months back? Where some company claimed they had copyright on 
factual data?

This is as far as I can tell, factual data. A Satellite or Antenna is 
configured to broadcast in a certain way, the scan tables are a 
collection of this data. They get to us from volunteers who either scan 
for them or find 'official' docs from the broadcaster and re-arrange it 
to something useful to us.....

So who owns this data? Can it be licensed as GPL? Falls it under the 
Public Domain by default?

Personally, I think that the copyright license applied to the actual 
source code, but not the scan tables.

>
> Thanks,
> Jon
Oliver