Re: [OT] Right to use vs. sue (was: No call for Ada...)

["Marius Amado Alves" <amado.alves@netcabo.pt>]

> ... I believe that "no warranty"
> licenses has to be void...

I like the idea. Are there legal examples?

> ... talking in programming language terms you can copyright a type but
> not its instance.

In general yes, but there are a lot of fuzzy cases. Inheritance,
prototype-bases languages, languages where types are first class objects,
etc.

> So one can copyright an engineering decision, not an
> example of its use. It would be a nonsense to copyright a car, but it
> is what actually happens with software.

Again, I believe the music example can help. Reward is due when the work is
executed. So it works for items that can be executed. Music scores,
programs, in a straightfoward way.  For cars, one can view the construction
and sale of a batch of them as the execution of their blueprint. Similar to
books.