Question about documentation and patents

[Grayg Ralphsnyder]

John Cowan wrote:
> Michael Tiemann scripsit:
>
>   
>>> If documentation, as opposed to source code, is released under a
>>> FLOSS license with a patent grant, would people assume that the license
>>> covers what is described by the documentation?
>>>       
>> Not me.  
>>     
>
> Pretty much everyone agrees on this.  But here's the stinger in the tail
> that gets you as you slide down the slippery slope:
>
> What's the line between sufficiently detailed blow-by-blow documentation
> and the code itself?  "a = a + 1" is code in some C-like language, and
> "increase the value of the variable a by one" is not code in any language
> (no, it's not Cobol either, that'd be "add 1 to a").  Where's the bright
> line between describing code and providing code?
>
> In the end, all that written software can do is document what is done
> by some machine, virtual or actual.  If you want to argue from this that
> software patents are broken because software isn't a device or process,
> I won't contest it -- but software patents are a fact of life in the
> U.S. and other places.
I think that documentation would be covered by copyright and not 
license.  A listing of the actual source code would be covered by the 
same license as the actual software.  If the source code is included in 
the documentation, is the documentation in its entirety covered by the 
source code license?  That "increase the value of the variable a by one" 
is an algorithm.  What to do with that - copyright, license ?  What if 
it was the algorithm (method) for Fourier Transform ?

grayg
>
>