Copyright suit against Time Zone Database

Copyright suit against Time Zone Database

That is, among others, all Unix and Linux versions as a reference for time zone information database used is no longer available. As the British news site The Register reported, the FTP server that has operated the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has been taken offline. Eggert reason to be a copyright lawsuit against Arthur David Olson and Paul, the so-called care of the Olson database and the server for many years.

The date contains freely available as public domain tz database of historical information about the local time for selected places on Earth (example: "Europe / Berlin"). It is used among other things, on all Unix and Linux versions as well as several Web sites and Java applications. The time zone data is usually stored statically and will be updated on system updates. Linux stores the data in the directory / usr / share / zoneinfo.

Time zones change surprisingly often: The Java Developer Stephen Colebourne underestimated in his blog that there are up to a hundred changes per year. Olson previously published about a month clock new versions of the tz database. Meanwhile, Robert Elz has temporarily made a backup of the database.

Astrolabe has complained, maker of astrology software, in Boston. Astrolabe offers, among other things, the ACS Atlas program, which consists of two parts, "ACS International Atlas" and "ACS American Atlas." With the software, the historical period can be anywhere in order to determine preparation of horoscopes.

The Olson database, the action, unlawful use material from the ACS Atlas, hold the copyright on the Astrolabe. In fact, a comment mentioned in the time zone database, the book "The American Atlas" by ACS Publications as a reliable source of time zone information for the United States before 1991. As the copyright situation is real and whether the time zone information is generally protected by copyright, the court must decide now.