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Algorithms are not subject to copyright. Writing and copying an inverse square root is fine, doesn't matter if it's human, computer or alien. The trouble is ve

Algorithms are not subject to copyright. Writing and copying an inverse square root is fine, doesn't matter if it's human, computer or alien. The trouble is verbatim copy of original copyrightable code, with an attached license that doesn't allow it. Github is most likely in violation because it's doing just that. However that specific square root square example may or may not be a violation. There's a difficult question of what constitutes original copyrightable work, a trivial well defined algorithm isn't, a larger code with comments could be.

gravypod 5y ago
> Writing and copying an inverse square root is fine, doesn't matter if it's human, computer or alien. This is very myopic because there's a big difference between "memorizing an algorithm" and "memorizing an implementation of an algorithm". > There's a difficult question of what constitutes original copyrightable work, a trivial well defined algorithm isn't I don't think copyright law agrees with this sentiment in the US. Even the spacing, variable names, and comments are non-functional attributes of this code. And, this also goes further, because the machine code it produces is also data that has copy rights. There's layers and layers of complexity here that is difficult to enumerate with forum posts.
- user5994461 5y ago
  >>> This is very myopic because there's a big difference between "memorizing an algorithm" and "memorizing an implementation of an algorithm". No there's isn't. An implementation of an algorithm is not copyrightable. It's specifically cited as an exception in European directives. I should say I speak more from a EU perspective. US may vary slightly. Both vary by country/state as well. There is a challenge with determining the threshold for copyrightable original work and it's not the same in every jurisdiction. That we can agree on. (I personally think comments are a big problem because they're always freeform text). In my opinion the tool should consider doing an autoformatting and removing comments, to avoid these issues.

gravypod 5y ago

> Writing and copying an inverse square root is fine, doesn't matter if it's human, computer or alien. This is very myopic because there's a big difference between "memorizing an algorithm" and "memorizing an implementation of an algorithm". > There's a difficult question of what constitutes original copyrightable work, a trivial well defined algorithm isn't I don't think copyright law agrees with this sentiment in the US. Even the spacing, variable names, and comments are non-functional attributes of this code. And, this also goes further, because the machine code it produces is also data that has copy rights. There's layers and layers of complexity here that is difficult to enumerate with forum posts.

user5994461 5y ago
>>> This is very myopic because there's a big difference between "memorizing an algorithm" and "memorizing an implementation of an algorithm". No there's isn't. An implementation of an algorithm is not copyrightable. It's specifically cited as an exception in European directives. I should say I speak more from a EU perspective. US may vary slightly. Both vary by country/state as well. There is a challenge with determining the threshold for copyrightable original work and it's not the same in every jurisdiction. That we can agree on. (I personally think comments are a big problem because they're always freeform text). In my opinion the tool should consider doing an autoformatting and removing comments, to avoid these issues.