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When my last company got acquired, part of the due diligence process was a scan of our codebase for snippets from stack overflow. Every snippet found that wasn'

When my last company got acquired, part of the due diligence process was a scan of our codebase for snippets from stack overflow. Every snippet found that wasn't posted with a clear license by the author was challenged and we rewrote it. Now, I'm not entirely sure how necessary this was from a legal perspective. But introducing an AI into the mix will bring up a lot of uncertainty when it comes to how much change is required for something to no longer be considered a copy/derivative.

dmortin 4y ago
Did the scan find the process if they changed the variable names, for example? Or is that considered a differing snippet then?
- wolframhempel 4y ago
  This is exactly where it gets murky. We had the usual 1-4 line snippets. We went the extra mile to change them, rewriting them from scratch, partially with different implementations. Did we need to do that? Would it have been enough to just change a variable name or some spacing or similar? I don't think there's a clear standard. The music industry has struggled with this for a long time. When is a song derivative, when a copy, when is it "inspired by"...
  - anonymoushn 4y ago
    That sounds rough. Here's an 8-line snippet, please make sure you don't infringe my copyright: p = mmap( null, size, PROT_READ | PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE | MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0, );
redox99 4y ago
Isn't all stack overflow content creative commons? https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing
- wolframhempel 4y ago
  it is - which is a problem if you want to repackage something under a different license.
  - redox99 4y ago
    But you said > Every snippet found that wasn't posted with a clear license by the author was challenged and we rewrote it How is the license not clear?
    - wolframhempel 4y ago
      Fair - that was poorly expressed.
dmix 4y ago
That sounds like legal paranoia or a make-work program.

dmortin 4y ago

Did the scan find the process if they changed the variable names, for example? Or is that considered a differing snippet then?

wolframhempel 4y ago
This is exactly where it gets murky. We had the usual 1-4 line snippets. We went the extra mile to change them, rewriting them from scratch, partially with different implementations. Did we need to do that? Would it have been enough to just change a variable name or some spacing or similar? I don't think there's a clear standard. The music industry has struggled with this for a long time. When is a song derivative, when a copy, when is it "inspired by"...
- anonymoushn 4y ago
  That sounds rough. Here's an 8-line snippet, please make sure you don't infringe my copyright: p = mmap( null, size, PROT_READ | PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE | MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0, );

redox99 4y ago

Isn't all stack overflow content creative commons? https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing

wolframhempel 4y ago
it is - which is a problem if you want to repackage something under a different license.
- redox99 4y ago
  But you said > Every snippet found that wasn't posted with a clear license by the author was challenged and we rewrote it How is the license not clear?
  - wolframhempel 4y ago
    Fair - that was poorly expressed.

dmix 4y ago

That sounds like legal paranoia or a make-work program.