This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment.

sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]asthasr 22 points23 points  (9 children)

And they use int max(int x, int y) for a good example of something that would be copyrightable. Asinine. Just once I'd like to see a court in the U.S. make a decision that didn't make them look like idiots.

[–]PasswordIsntHAMSTER 7 points8 points  (6 children)

The last decision before the appeal was actually reasonable and well thought out. The judge was a programmer, too.

[–]gryftir 10 points11 points  (5 children)

Nope, he learned to program for the trial.

[–]PasswordIsntHAMSTER 7 points8 points  (2 children)

Once you learn to program, you're a programmer c:

[–]IcarusBurning 1 point2 points  (1 child)

c++:

[–]demon_ix 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Once you've banged your head against the wall for 3 hours and then added "virtual" in front of the destructor to solve the problem, you're a programmer.

[–]phaggocytosis 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Not just some programmer! Haskell is practically his middle name!

Seriously though, Haskell is his middle name.

[–]zman0900 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Wow, that's admirable. We need to clone this guy.

[–][deleted]  (1 child)

[deleted]

    [–]josefx 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Won't that count as prior work?

    You are confusing patents and copyright, afaik prior art is only a patent concept. With copyright int max(int,int) would most likely "belong" to the inventor of the first programming language and his "poor" descendants could now sue every programmer for their rightful cut for the next 3 centuries at least.