In gnu.misc.discuss 7 <website_has_em...@www.enemygadgets.com> wrote: > Hyman Rosen wrote:
> Wrong fool! No, I think you might actually be the right one. > As I write the assembler code for how a switch statement is implemented, > then I have copyright over it no matter how it gets subsequently used. > The assembler code for the switch statement is not generated > 'automatically'. The exact sequence is something I have to creatively > interpret and put together reading CPU specification. The degree of creativity involved in writing a few comparison and conditional/unconditional jump instructions is too low to merit copyright, just as composing the sentence "This is silly." would be. > Very often I look at how others have implemented the switch statement. > Some are brilliant shortcuts. Some are just average brilliant. Others > are mediocre. And a few down right stupid. > If I were proud of my method, I would not want anyone to use it without > copyright protecting it, especially if I felt (and other agree) that > my solution is better than anyone elses. Thats creative work. If you're talking about coding a switch statement, the creativity is almost entirely that of designers of the chip's instruction set. Given that instruction set, there're at most a handful of ways of doing a switch. > After that point, it doesn't matter how a compiler mixes and mashes > the output, the structure of how the switch statement got implemented > will contain my brilliant piece of assembler arranged like poetry > in a particular sequence and then copied over and over again for each > ocurance of the switch statement. No it won't. The assembler will only exist if the user asks for an object code listing - hardly ever. And it won't be what you wrote, since you didn't write in the destinations of the jump instructions; they derive from the author of the C source. > That original arragement template didn't discover itself! That is the > original work of authorship. Hardly. > In other words, the arangement of assembler is like arrangement > of passages in a musical score - and if I have copyright, then > no one should be using that particular arrangement without > some acknowledgement to copyright. No, your arrangement of "assembler" is is like the F major chord with suspended G at the beginning of Lennon and McCartney's "Yesterday". You don't get copyright on a single musical chord devoid of context. -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany). _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list gnu-misc-discuss@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss