4 ms·
It is not company property.
by whatshisface 10mo ago
It is not company property.
- Aurornis 10mo agoSupport staff or even engineers are not in a position to be making that call. It’s a legal department decision, even if it seems obvious to you.
- ozim 10mo agoThis should be the most upvoted answer. Yeah there are are startups where head guys don’t know that and developers jump the gun because they feel like they’re ones that have the best understanding of the issue at hand. But of course that’s legal territory.
- opello 10mo agoI agree that a front-line CSR or even engineer is not likely the right person, but surely then the responsible action is to redirect the request to the responsible department or person?
- SpicyLemonZest 10mo agoAbsolutely, and companies that routinely get requests like this train customer service agents on specific trigger words like "license" or "GDPR" that must be redirected. Without that training, it's not obvious why "it's GPLv2 licensed" is more compelling than the last customer's argument that the device warranty obligates you to drop everything and immediately fix the minor UI bug they reported.
- anigbrowl 10mo agoBut it's the company's legal department which would evaluate that claim. Because it's a legal claim. Licenses aren't magic spells, they're social agreements and non-executive employees don't want to get in trouble for making executive decisions.
- abigail95 10mo agoDerivative works are owned by those who create them. What copyright says you can do with them depends on the specifics, but the general case is true.
- treesknees 10mo agoThat really depends. A company can still own the copyright to the code that they’ve written, even if it’s licensed with GPL. It’s an asset that is transferred if the company is sold, etc, so yes, it’s actually company property. The GPL grants rights to use and distribute, but does not grant ownership. It’s not suddenly in the public domain.