JavaScript date validation function

[Gabriel Gunderson]

On Sun, 2006-07-23 at 23:48 -0600, Joe Crown wrote:
> I've worked on a JavaScript function, or more accurately group of 
> functions, which takes a date from one field, then checks if it is a 
> valid date.

Sounds like a useful tool.

> So I was wondering what you thought I should do with this.  I want it & 
> the ideas it uses to spread to other programs if they haven't already. 
> I was going to patent the idea, but I have since learned that I can't 
> afford the cost of doing that.

I very much doubt that you would be able to patent such a thing (at
least if the USPTO is doing it's job).  Besides many hackers like
yourself creating libraries for their own personal use, many languages
and supporting classes/functions/frameworks also do very similar things
with dates already.  Also, I don't know that it rises above the
"non-obvious" requirement.

The best way for it to "spread to other programs" is to open source it
and forget the patent.  You maintain the copyright and the world is
better place to hack JavaScript.

> I’ve thought of several different projects that might benefit from this, 
> but I wanted to get other peoples idea of what I should do with it.  I 
> have no idea if I should do it to a certain distribution of Linux, 
> Apache, Ruby on rails, or something else.

I would suggest none of them.  Make it as generally useful as you can,
and if it's a great tool, people will pick-up on it and make it work for
them (or their project).  Make sure the license you choose is compatible
with the projects you may have in mind as adopters.

Good luck and let us know when it's available to preview.

Regards,
Gabe

--
Gabriel Gunderson
http://gundy.org