Programming languages cannot be copyrighted, says senior EU court adviser | Hacker News Reader

Programming languages cannot be copyrighted, says senior EU court adviser

itworld.com

98 pointsabennett15 comments

The headline's somewhat misleading. What the court seems to have ruled is that the functionality of a program or programming language can't be copyrighted. The language itself (implementation, specifically) is still copyrightable, but the concepts it implements aren't.

Bot also added that a programming language cannot be protected by copyright since that is an element allowing instructions to be given to the computer.

So it sounds like programming languages are considered inherently functional, and thus not covered by copyright.

somewhat misleading is fair. But after I got past my initial confusion I found that I like the headline, as it reminds me of what a programming language is. Node.js, for instance, isn't a programming language but people often call it one.

No surprise. But thank god they got it right.

Not sure. What I read is "source code is not protected by copyright but algorithms can and should be protected", which would actually make licenses like GPL useless and software patents enforceable. Or did I miss something?

You misread. The ability to do something is not covered by copyright (in this case, the ability of a program to implement the SAS language), while "the means for achieving these functionalities may be protected by copyright."

So you can copyright source code itself, but not the algo or functionality produced by that code. Right?

That's what patents do.

*in the US

Thanks for the clarification. The other entry on HN has IMHO much better wording, and goes more in depth.

Well, it's just an opinion of an adviser, for now. The actual court decision hasn't been announced.

I (or my team) use SAS in my everyday work. It is not a language to be proud about. There are many inconsistencies within, and it carries a lot of baggage - for example PROC MEANS and PROC SUMMARY do the same thing now (although they may have carried different meanings much earlier). PROC MEANS, PROC FREQ, PROC SORT all have very different (read inconsistent) ways to specify output table's name, whereas they could be the same. There are many, many other quirks.

Then again, for a system which sells mainly by virtue of traditional monopoly and being a legacy system, it is not surprising they would fight a case against copying their incoherent and utterly unintuitive language.

Keep in mind the language dates from the mid-70s.

I always found it interesting that SAS was one of the few big companies, ever, built primarily on a programming language.

Early on (25-30 years ago) a family member worked there, and I was a summer intern there. I picked up a few things which seem relevant here.

There was reportedly some guy by the name of Mr. Bass who (as in this case) began publishing a workalike product called "The Bass System".

Originally the name "SAS" was an acronym for "Statistical Analysis System". I heard it was changed, at least in part, due to ambiguities pertaining to trademarking acronyms. I don't know if this was related to Mr. Bass in particular.

I disagree. Unless you're talking about assembly it doesn't makes any sense, and even assembly, because a human created it, it envolved thinking and creativity. Therefore, it's totally liable to be copyrighted.

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