From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,4feb499c05063194 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news2.google.com!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!not-for-mail From: "Marc A. Criley" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Artistically creative expression has no role in software design Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 09:11:57 -0500 Message-ID: <2ma09hFhab70U1@uni-berlin.de> References: <2m2j9gFhf4cpU1@uni-berlin.de> X-Trace: news.uni-berlin.de N4lKx/sox08Zz1XIdsoAeghQGw6vds9C4S5MG3xRmzWXoEAGcr X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1437 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1441 Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:2348 Date: 2004-07-22T09:11:57-05:00 List-Id: "Robert I. Eachus" wrote: > Maybe copyright law should recognize this. That would mean that you > could copyright code design, and ANY code that was an instance of your > copyrighted design would be covered by the copyright. Copyrighting the > requirements is a bit more troubling, but not much. If you do a good > job on any programming task, you may put more than half your effort into > the requirements. (Of course, you can instead put much more than half > your effort into debugging...) Recall the title of the original article: "The Case against Copyright Protection of Non-literal Elements of Copyright Software". The author is arguing in fact that the design itself should not by copyrightable, because the design is as functionally driven to a singular solution by the requirements as the code is. This then starts to smell like advocacy for software patents--but that's another issue with its own pros and cons (mostly cons -- mc :-). Marc