Unless he applies (has applied at this point) in a particular country, or has a Patent Cooperation Treaty application filed in some country and is pursuing it in a particular country, he is completely out of luck by publishing his algorithm. (And as another commentor mentioned, post-Alice, it's pretty unlikely that a patent applicant will succeed with software patent applications absent some pretty close coupling to something specific about the computer hardware.)
It's amazing to me that so many software developers have no basic grasp of IP--the thing they work so hard to produce. It's not like it's all that difficult: Copyrights protect the expression of an idea; patents protect inventions. This developer seems to think that copyrights protect ideas.
Unless he applies (has applied at this point) in a particular country, or has a Patent Cooperation Treaty application filed in some country and is pursuing it in a particular country, he is completely out of luck by publishing his algorithm. (And as another commentor mentioned, post-Alice, it's pretty unlikely that a patent applicant will succeed with software patent applications absent some pretty close coupling to something specific about the computer hardware.)
It's amazing to me that so many software developers have no basic grasp of IP--the thing they work so hard to produce. It's not like it's all that difficult: Copyrights protect the expression of an idea; patents protect inventions. This developer seems to think that copyrights protect ideas.