> they would often happily implement the same idea someone else had from scratch without any qualms
There is only one MD5. There is only one preorder traversal of a binary tree. Creativity is essential, but unless you do those kinds of things the same way as everyone else, you're doing them wrong and will get the wrong results.
>There is only one MD5. >you're doing them wrong and will get the wrong results.
I don't guess you're a developer or coder.
Being that the speed of MD5 has increased greatly on the same hardware over the years has shown there are many, if not infinite ways of finding an md5sum. Essentially code is math and number are infinite. You could calculate a number with multiplication and call it NumberTwizzle(TM), I could then look at your formula and write a new formula with bit shifts that runs twice and outputs the exact same answer. I could not call it NumberTwizzle though.
>Creativity is essential, but unless you do those kinds of things the same way as everyone else,
This partial sentence, I don't even. Creativity is looking at what other people are doing and coming up with a 'better', 'cheaper', or 'faster' (maybe all) solution to an existing problem. doing 'things' the same way as everyone else is the exact opposite of creativity.
I think you've missed the point. There are dozens different of implementations of each.
As far as I know, nobody got DMCAed by the inventors of either for writing one.
Yet here, we have designers trying to claim ownership of a particular set of colours and a vague notion of style. Both of which were around before their "implementation" was.
There is only one MD5. There is only one preorder traversal of a binary tree. Creativity is essential, but unless you do those kinds of things the same way as everyone else, you're doing them wrong and will get the wrong results.