Getting It Together
By Bret A. Fausett
This article is protected by copyright. I've expressed my ideas with a unique ordering of words and if the same or a strongly similar ordering of words is found in some other publication, you could be hearing from my lawyer (which in this case would be me). There's nothing magic about this particular ordering of words—in fact a better writer might arrange them in more interesting and clever ways—but this exact ordering of words is my artistic expression, providing a foundation for my copyright.
If something in this column resonates with you, and you want to convey the ideas expressed in it to someone else, that's great. It's encouraged. That's why I wrote this column and why Web Techniques decided to publish it. It's supposed to be informative and help you advance your career as a Web professional. Take these ideas and use them, with or without attribution.
But what if this column were code? Instead of using this space to describe a problem with open-source licenses, what if the space were filled with lines of code comprising the latest Linux kernel or just a good JavaScript routine? That code would be no less an expression of an idea—meant to be helpful to the reader—and the unique ordering of its words, numbers, and symbols would be even more interwoven with its expression. Unlike my column, in which the ideas can be easily separated from the unique ordering of my words and pithy phrases, ideas expressed by code may be very dependent on the code itself.
I could claim a copyright on the code, but because most non-HTML code is eventually compiled, and so made private, I would have a difficult, if not impossible time establishing that someone had infringed upon my copyrighted expression.
