"Walter Bright" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected]... > anton smith wrote: >> Walter Bright Wrote: >> >>> Hi Herb! It's hard to find anything truly original in language design, >>> somebody somewhere always did something sorta like it first somewhere >>> else. Most of D's features are inspired by features from a long list of >>> languages, some alive, some dead. >> >> For some reason Oleg Kiselyov often finds original ideas in language >> design and its usage. > > I don't know enough about Haskell to comment on that. But I do know that > there's a lot of grey area between an original idea and something similar > that was done before. How different must it be before it is considered > "original"? > > That's one of the reasons the software patent system is busted. > > There's a lot of patentable stuff in D (not just my ideas, but some ideas > from others, too), but I've chosen not to attempt to patent them.
To prove how bad the USPTO is, there was some guy that applied for a patent on a method of swinging on a swingset. It was approved. So under the current syetem, pretty much anything at all is patentable. A person could come up with patentable claim just by farting on a piece of paper.
