[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)