RE: DOES ANYONE OWN SYNTAX?
RE: DOES ANYONE OWN SYNTAX?
Sent: 12/6/96; 11:39:42 AM
From: mark@mtlake.com (Mark Richer)
What if you wrote a translator that converted programs from one syntax to another? I don't mean partial translation but 100%. It's not ideal from a business perspective, but it seems like it would be legal. And it would be a good way to teach greedy people who don't take care of the customers a lesson --- don't want to share your syntax, we'll create our own open syntax instead and convert all those all programs written in your (now outdated) syntax.
It seems that if you designed a language and its syntax with 100% translation capability as a design contraint, then it wouldn't be hard to achieve. Therefore, real-world problems translating between languages are artifacts of designs that didn't plan for translation.
> By asserting ownership of the syntax, Kirk is making his customers > pay a higher price than they ever agreed to.
By not asserting ownership of the PostScript syntax, Adobe created a standard and dominated a market by using it's early lead, strong R&D, marketing, money, and business management.
Lotus fought over all sorts of details about 1-2-3 and eventually was killed by Microsoft and Excel in the spreadsheet market.
I don't think language syntax should be copyrightable anymore than typefaces. It makes sense to allow for trademarking of names, but that's about it. The use of patents to get around the difficulty of enforcing copyrights for what are essentially ideas rather than implementations is also a dangerous trend, especially for the little guys who don't have patent libraries to trade.
Mark
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