On Friday 16 May 2003 14:10, Mervine, Keith wrote: > I don't think you can copyrigt ideas anyway. Im not an expert on > copyright but im pretty sure you can use ideas without it being a > derivitive. Like the man said, there are only so many ways to write a > loop > > If I used > > for (x=0;x>10;x++) > > in a program I write and another program does the same, is it a > derivitive? I don't think so. I think derivitive would be if you > started with ROM and changed it. No matter HOW much you change it's > still a derivitive of ROM. Using ideas that you see in another mud such > as ROM I don't think counts. As long as you didn't steal the code from > it. > > Not an expert opinion, just mine. I may be 110% wrong. > > K >
Chiming in with my $0.05 (damn falling dollar values!) My understanding is that concepts can't be copyrighted, only the tangible expression of those concepts. (patents cover concepts and processes, I believe) Which is why anyone can have orcs, but my orc artwork and my orc racial history and story texts about them are copyrighted. Generally, if you can 1) don't start with actual ROM source and try to modify it into something "100% original", and 2) not look at the ROM source when you're writing code, then you should be fine. Nobody's going to (or nobody should, rather - there's no telling what these yahoos will actually -do-) hassle you if a loop happens to look similar, or if some variable names wind up the same. Hell, I've been working with this crap for so long that any C-based design I come up is bound to have similarities (much to my shame, crappy design as it is), but that doesn't stop it from being my original work. -- Bobby Bailey | "The only source of knowledge is experience." MUD Developer | -- Albert Einstein Internet Junkie | PGP Keys: http://chil.kyndig.com/pgp http://www.kyndig.com/ -- Mud & Online Text Game Community
