[Savannah-hackers] [ 101951 ] Legality Issues

[nobody]

Support Request #101951, was updated on Thu 03/13/03 at 07:21
You can respond by visiting: 
http://savannah.gnu.org/support/?func=detailsupport&support_id=101951&group_id=11

Category: None
Status: Open
Priority: 5
Summary: Legality Issues

By: qckcode
Date: Thu 03/13/03 at 07:21
Logged In: YES 
user_id=16521
Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.0.0) Gecko/20020623 
Debian/1.0.0-0.woody.1

I'm not too sure how on-topic this is; if it's off
topic, a pointer to a doc or an area to research would
be very helpful.

Before I start developing/cvs-committing my code, I
thought I'd make one last check to avoid possible legal
issues in the future:

Ideas are non-patentable right?
Especially:
  * if I read an algorithms text, take the pseudo-code;
and transform it into real-working C++ code, then this
is not a copyright violation of any sort right? In
particular, the pseudo code form "Introduction to
Algorithms" by Cormen, Leiserson, and Rivest

  * if I read an idea on how an piece of code is
implemented (regarding of license, as long as there is
no non-disclaimer agreement), and learn how it works;
and implement/code my own version, w/o taking/copying
any lines from previous code; then this is not a
copyright violation of any sort right? Particularly, I
have: the "visitor concept" from Boost Graph Library
(http://www.boost.org/libs/graph/doc/visitor_concepts.html)
in mind.

Some highly optimized / very classical ideas seem to
have implementations that lend themselves into one
"trivial" form of code, which might result in multiple
coders coming up with the same idea -- what should I do
when writing/committing such pieces of code.

For example: a breadty first search on a weighted,
directed graph -- one essentially must have a priority
queue, a few arrays (distance, reachable, parent); and
pretty much a 4 lines of code per 1 line or pseudo code
replacement from books/websites.

Lastly, along the same line, how often should I
cvs-commit my changes to show proof of "development" of
code? Every file? Every function? Should non-debugged
code by CVS-committed as well? Code that generates
warnings? How about non-compilable code? Should I have
a separate (already created, heh) TESTING directory
where stuff are _buggy_ and periodically move stuff
from TESTING back into the main "liblia" as it stabilizes?

Insight/information/docs/pointers for the above will be
much apperciated.

Thanks in advance,
--qckcode

----------------------------------------------------------------------
You can respond by visiting: 
http://savannah.gnu.org/support/?func=detailsupport&support_id=101951&group_id=11