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This still seems like pretty good protection for someone who has written an interpreter that performs "the best" vis-a-vis any clones. From the end user/custom
by CUR10US 14y ago
This still seems like pretty good protection for someone who has written an interpreter that performs "the best" vis-a-vis any clones. From the end user/customer's perspective, who cares how the function's interface/arguments are structured? What matters is how well the functions are written and thus how well the interpreter, and the programs it runs, perform. Of course, programmers might care about how well interfaces are designed, but unfortunately we can't sue people for crappy interfaces.
- caf 14y agoWell, from the end-user's perspective they care very much that the clone can provide the same functions organised in the same way as the original, because otherwise their scripts that run on the original interpreter won't run on the clone. But yes, the underlying implementation is still subject to copyright (and potentially, patent). You can't copyright the fact that your scripting language has an operator spelled >< that concatenates strings, but you can copyright your particular code that performs string concatenation.
- CUR10US 14y agoYes, same functionality. I only meant the implementation, the code. Let's take an example: The APL and APL-related languages. IBM and some other old companies have been licensing these "languages" for many years. But what are people really licensing? Not the language. If we agree that languages are not protectatble, then no one needs permission to use a language. (What the licensee is really paying for is the use of an interpreter and perhaps support/consulting.) But how many programmers understand this distinction?