[bediger4000]

You wrote: would probably not be legal.

And there's the problem. "IP" laws and customs will be vague enough that the rest of us will have to totally steer clear of any "IP" problems. It costs far too much to get the "probably" erased or the "not legal" reversed.

Litigation is for gamblers or aristocrats. Strict "IP" will only lead to less innovation, higher prices, and the creation of a semi-aristocracy, the "rightsholders".

[e12e]

Oh, to be clear, I think this verdict is pretty bad (as if things weren't muddy enough already). I began writing the comment/looking through K&R and realized that in this particular case -- one might not have a clear-cut legal right to use the example code. Even if that is clearly the intent of the authors.

Although, I'd be surprised if there haven't been rulings on similar cases before. Either way - the code from a text book, and code from technical documentation are probably not the same under the law.

That doesn't mean I don't think it's silly to hold APIs to be copyright-able -- I just think the two questions are different: 1) Is sample code provided for the purpose of re-use, fair-use (or something equivalent)? and 2) Are APIs copyrightable?

[caf]

When I wrote the original comment, I was actually thinking about the description of the API of the standard library that is in Appendix B of the Second Edition, containing such copyrightable creative expressions as

  long strtol(const char *s, char **endp, int base)