Wolfe patent on "assert chains"

[Robert Dewar]

Richard Kenner wrote:
>> IE they don't care whether it i printed, and don't care whether it i a
>> publication, they care whether it is accessible to the public and has
>> been disseminated to the public.
> 
> Right.  That's exactly what I meant.   They are saying that "printed"
> vs "electronic" doesn't matter.
> 
> However, the issue here isn't whether it matters if the GCC sources were
> printed in a book someplace or just available electronically.
> 
> The issue that Robert was raising is not the "printed" part, but the
> "publication" part.  Specifically, if source code could be considered
> a "publication".  Reading the reference you gave makes it sound like they're
> using the term "publication" interchangably with "technical paper" in
> that they're talking about online references and databases.
> 
> Nothing in that document (I didn't go to the referenced cases) seems on
> point to the issue of whether source code is a "publication".

For example, at one extreme, the source code may have extensive comments
so that it is clearly a publication.

At the other extreme it could be uncommented junk, and an argument could
be made that someone with appropriate skills could not reasonably 
extract the information needed.

At a really really extreme level, object code can document stuff if you
are willing to do enough reverse engineering, but would be unlikely to
qualify as publication.

I don't think this is entirely off topic, we do want to make sure that
anything we do within gcc acts at the very least as its own defence
against a patent that comes along later.