Re:What Copilot means for open source
by zarzavat on Saturday June 25, 2022 @09:36PM
(#31880267)
No, you do not. Copyright protects creative expression. If there is only one way to do something, or only one good way to do something, then there is no creativity and hence no copyright.
In particular an algorithmic concept cannot be copyrighted but a description of an algorithm in code can be. I think that many programmers believe that the algorithm is the copyrightable bit because that is the “hard part” compared to say the variable names and comments which are the easy part. But copyright cares much more about the latter than loops and conditionals, which have much less creative value. Mathematical expressions cannot be copyrighted.
In particular an algorithmic concept cannot be copyrighted but a description of an algorithm in code can be. I think that many programmers believe that the algorithm is the copyrightable bit because that is the “hard part” compared to say the variable names and comments which are the easy part. But copyright cares much more about the latter than loops and conditionals, which have much less creative value. Mathematical expressions cannot be copyrighted.