How do you know that you really invented something totally new? Answer is, you don't. Computer programming as a practice is now over 50 years old, and every math and science student has done some of it, and commerical developers and scientists/engineers/mathamaticians have done even more. Many of the algorythms and formulas go back for generations, and were well understood before we had computers to make them practical.
Copyright law only protects the expression of an idea -- you cannot patent an algorythm (chemical formulas seem to be something of an exception, but many formulas are never released to prevent their exposure and duplication when the patent runs out). Copyright law has been tightened and extended, but publishing a work in a public place without a copyright notice is stupid if you think people aren't going to take it for granted that you meant for them to have free and ready access to it and the right to adapt or reuse it.
Computer code is recognized now as copyrightable, but the down side is that some code only works a certain way for certain operations. People have lost copyright cases because of mere similarities, and a successful countersuit may find that your code also has elements that duplicates other prior work -- so taken to the extreme, you may win a hollow victory if it means your code makes you equally liable to someone else's claims.
The point is, if you bring the lawmakers, lawyers, and courts into it, then sound reason goes out the window and you are managed by people and processes that do not understand the need to learn, train, teach, and exemplify how code works by publishing fragments of it here and there.
I occasionally publish tips, because I've been there, and have moved on, and yet I owe those that helped me, and my way of paying back is to continue the process by helping otherw. That should be understood and supported in the community.
My experience has been that concerns over copyright on forums is a newbie issue, because that person thinks that they will shortly have some fantastic code written unlike any ever written before. Or they are afraid that if they use or adapt code from a forum, that they face the prospect of a future lawsuit. One is unlikely, and the other is almost absurb. Sample code does not have the complexity and range of functions needed to make them full fledge applications. It would likely take many thousands of such examples to base a program on, and the amount of adaptation and conversion needed to fit all the pieces together would be so extensive that any similarities to the original would simply disappear.
And most programmers have better things to do with their time than to search for evidence that someone may have adopted a part of their code and used it elsewhere. If they did a nice piece of work, and it surfaces later on, they like having their egos stroked just a bit with some form of acknowledgement of their work, acknowledging that this was something special, and where it came from. But let's face facts: If you aren't willing to follow through and complete the work and make it commercially viable, then how can you really fault someone else who had more gumption and moxy, and wgo did it instead of you?
Copyright law only protects the expression of an idea -- you cannot patent an algorythm (chemical formulas seem to be something of an exception, but many formulas are never released to prevent their exposure and duplication when the patent runs out). Copyright law has been tightened and extended, but publishing a work in a public place without a copyright notice is stupid if you think people aren't going to take it for granted that you meant for them to have free and ready access to it and the right to adapt or reuse it.
Computer code is recognized now as copyrightable, but the down side is that some code only works a certain way for certain operations. People have lost copyright cases because of mere similarities, and a successful countersuit may find that your code also has elements that duplicates other prior work -- so taken to the extreme, you may win a hollow victory if it means your code makes you equally liable to someone else's claims.
The point is, if you bring the lawmakers, lawyers, and courts into it, then sound reason goes out the window and you are managed by people and processes that do not understand the need to learn, train, teach, and exemplify how code works by publishing fragments of it here and there.
I occasionally publish tips, because I've been there, and have moved on, and yet I owe those that helped me, and my way of paying back is to continue the process by helping otherw. That should be understood and supported in the community.
My experience has been that concerns over copyright on forums is a newbie issue, because that person thinks that they will shortly have some fantastic code written unlike any ever written before. Or they are afraid that if they use or adapt code from a forum, that they face the prospect of a future lawsuit. One is unlikely, and the other is almost absurb. Sample code does not have the complexity and range of functions needed to make them full fledge applications. It would likely take many thousands of such examples to base a program on, and the amount of adaptation and conversion needed to fit all the pieces together would be so extensive that any similarities to the original would simply disappear.
And most programmers have better things to do with their time than to search for evidence that someone may have adopted a part of their code and used it elsewhere. If they did a nice piece of work, and it surfaces later on, they like having their egos stroked just a bit with some form of acknowledgement of their work, acknowledging that this was something special, and where it came from. But let's face facts: If you aren't willing to follow through and complete the work and make it commercially viable, then how can you really fault someone else who had more gumption and moxy, and wgo did it instead of you?