🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <66709@sgi.sgi.com> karsh@trifolium.esd.sgi.com (Bruce Karsh) writes:

    It's new for software, but it's been in effect for other areas for a long
    time.  For instance, music copyrights.  

I don't think this is such a good parallel. A better one might be
recipes which seem to me to be exactly parallel to algorithms. The
rule there, if I remember right, is that the recipe itself is
copyright but the method of preparation and the result are not. So
someone can publish a recipe with the same ingredients and the same
steps so long as they do not copy your text. 

This does not seem to have stifled R&D in the food industry, nor the
production of cookbooks nor peoples desire to do a little R&D at home. 

    Also, there is an analogue to
    look and feel protection in publishing.  You are not allowed to steal
    someone else's book by making simple changes to names, places, etc.  If
    you write substantially the same book, even if not one name is the same,
    you will infringe.

Yes but that is not `Look and Feel' that is the equivalent of getting
the source code, rewriting some minor bits and selling the result. A
parallel to look and feel would be a copyright on locked room
mysteries or The Severn Samauri.

[ And then the argument generalises into patents which is silly since
  that is a totally separate issue. ]
	
--
rjc@uk.ac.ed.cstr