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Comment by skymt | Hacker News Reader

> And I wonder how copyright even applies to "code snippets"?

The Software Freedom Law Center has a substantial article on copyrightability of code: https://softwarefreedom.org/resources/2007/originality-requi...

The important point here is that there's no minimum length for code to be copyrightable. It simply needs to be original and at least minimally creative. Since at least thousands of other developers have found the snippet to be useful enough to directly borrow rather than writing an equivalent, it sure looks copyrightable to me.

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Thanks for that link! I found this part especially interesting:

"In particular, the laws stress that it is a programmer’s expression of some functionality that may be protected by copyright, and not the functionality itself. If code embodies the only way (or one of very few ways) to express its underlying functionality, that code will be considered unoriginal because the expression is inseparable from the functionality. Similarly, if a program’s expression is dictated entirely by practical or technical considerations, or other external constraints, it will also be considered unoriginal."

Sounds like a case that at least some snippets aren't copyrightable.

You'll find some more information on the "copyrightability" of code snippets in Section 3 of the paper that Andreas mentioned in his blog post and on the corresponding slides: https://empirical-software.engineering/assets/pdf/emse18-sni... https://empirical-software.engineering/assets/pdf/icse19-sni...

I don't understand how the above principle can distinguish anything, at all.

You could reasonably argue that every piece of code is completely and only expressing functionality, because it's all inherently directing the computer to do stuff. So only comments would be protected.

On the other hand, you could instead argue that every piece of code can be translated into another language, and in fact is, whether interpreted or compiled, so the source code is exclusively expression only as the functionality is never tied to it.

But it doesn't seem to me to make any sense to say that some part or aspect is expression and another is functionality. It's all or nothing.

I assume it's like plagiarism, and if you rewrite the code "in your own words" you've copied the functionality but not the individual expression.

Also seems that copyright regarding code and the whole world of copyleft is still a grey area in the courts.

That's interesting, comparing it to plagiarism, reminds me of when I was shamed when I was like 8 for rewriting a paragraph from a book in my own words for an essay. At least when I was that age, that was totally considered plagiarism (at least by my parents). It was crushing to find that even though I'd worked really hard on paraphrasing each sentence, it didn't count and I'd missed the whole point.

I wonder what standards colleges and research journals have now.

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