Re: Shareable Code

"Albert van der Horst" <albert@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:jxgwk9.omb@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Where algorithms are not copyrightable, the brilliant programmer is
> fully entitled to recreate the program in his spare time, and
> copyright the resulting program. The remainder of the reasoning
> is a non-sequitur. It is left in so that people can retrace any
> wrong conclusion they have drawn.
>

Whether patent or copyright, the burden of defence falls on the person or
cor****ation claiming infringement of their IP.  The difference as I see it

is
that a patent is a do***ent that says the patent office has reviewed the 
calim
and found it meets the standards of being original and not obvious,
whereas
copyright is simply an individual's unsubstantiated claim that this is his

own
original work. What an individual views as a sufficient change to 
proprietary
work to avoid infringement might not be similarly viewed by a judge.  In
any event it is only likely to be presented to a judge if there is enough
money at stake to warrant hiring the lawyers.


>>It seems to me that the only workable alternatives are either to keep
code
>>secret and proprietary - probably difficult to impossible in the
internet
>>era - or to release it to the public domain.  I suspect most businesses,
>>having paid to have the code produced, will chose to attempt the former.
>
> In microsoft dreams!

It may well be that the presence of the internet will make the idea of IP
obsolete.  That would not be a good thing IMO.