🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1990Nov22.031103.8749@cs.ubc.ca> manis@cs.ubc.ca (Vincent Manis) writes:


    In article <9011211842.AA07643@mole.ai.mit.edu> rms@AI.MIT.EDU (Richard
    Stallman) writes: 

    >There is no copyright reason why you can't.  Copyright doesn't cover
    >algorithms.

    But, in my non-legal opinion, the magazine might have a case. If what
    you do is a mechanical translation, then the magazine might argue that
    what you have produced is a ``derivative,'' to which their copyright
    still applies. If, on the other hand, you have exercised considerable
    ingenuity in your code (e.g., finding clever data structure
    representations) then the magazine's case disappears. 

The obvious parallel is with recipes. In that case you can't copy the
_text_ without infringing their copyright, but you can write a
recipe(procedure) with the same ingreedients(inputs) and
method(algorithm/data structure) worded in a different way.

This is IMHO another good argument against look and feel copyright. If
Apple can copyright their mind dessicatingly horrible user interface
then someone somewhere is going to copyright spaghetti as an interface
to pasta.

--
rjc@uk.ac.ed.cstr		DEFINITELY not a lawer. Quote at your
				own risk.