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=-2.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=unavailable 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!proxad.net!usenet-fr.net!enst.fr!melchior!cuivre.fr.eu.org!melchior.frmug.org!not-for-mail From: "Alexander E. Kopilovich" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Artistically creative expression has no role in software design Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 05:45:33 +0400 (MSD) Organization: Cuivre, Argent, Or Message-ID: References: <2m2j9gFhf4cpU1@uni-berlin.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: lovelace.ada-france.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: melchior.cuivre.fr.eu.org 1090288426 53776 212.85.156.195 (20 Jul 2004 01:53:46 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@melchior.cuivre.fr.eu.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 01:53:46 +0000 (UTC) To: comp.lang.ada@ada-france.org Return-Path: In-Reply-To: <2m2j9gFhf4cpU1@uni-berlin.de>; from "Marc A. Criley" at Mon, 19 Jul 2004 13:46:58 -0500 X-Mailer: Mail/@ [v2.44 MSDOS] X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new-20030616-p7 (Debian) at ada-france.org X-BeenThere: comp.lang.ada@ada-france.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.4 Precedence: list List-Id: "Gateway to the comp.lang.ada Usenet newsgroup" List-Unsubscribe: , List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:2262 Date: 2004-07-20T05:45:33+04:00 Marc A. Criley wrote: > In spectating the "SCO vs Linux" lawsuit (www.groklaw.net), a lot of > documents of various types get posted. One of the recent references was a > paper titled, "The case against Copyright Protection of Non-literal Elements > of Computer Software" http://tinyurl.com/3tjqj, by Christopher Heer of the > University of Toronto. > [...] > > One of the interesting conclusions of this paper is this: > > "Since the design of computer software is forever driven by its intended > functionality and efficiency concerns, the room for artistically creative > expression never arises. It seems that the author of that paper knows far too little about art and artistically created expressions. Perhaps he thinks that art is overwhelmingly not functional, but decorative... and that true artists never worry about restrictions and consequences, being driven by mystical revelations. I'd like to recall here an interesting (and not rare) kind of art - propaganda art, which from time to time thrives both in literature and in movies (especially in war or tension times). There are plenty of examples of true art of this kind - and certainly the ultimate purposes of those things were and are functionality and efficiency. Another well-known generic example is architecture - one may recall that so beloved by many in software world "design patterns" were largely originated from the Christpher Alexander's work on architectural patterns - and then read the first book in that series - "Timeless Way of Building" by Christopher Alexander - and see the roles of functionality and effectiveness in that art. Then, the author of that paper holds awfully narrow view for computer software. It seems that he recognizes very specific-purpose software only - because he spoke about functionality as about a compact and well-defined thing, which does not need such artisitic features as fine balancing between contradictory criteria. He surely did not ask himself: what is the functionality for a text editor of MS Word kind, and how it differs - not in general, but in all important details - from the functionality of a text editor of, say, Emacs kind. So I think that the quoted paper does not deserve further reading -;) . Alexander Kopilovich aek@vib.usr.pu.ru Saint-Petersburg Russia