4 ms·
Parts of the article are very misleading. There are ambiguous statements, outright errors and general incoherence. "...shun copyright licensing altogether. Whe
by ds9 14y ago
Parts of the article are very misleading. There are ambiguous statements, outright errors and general incoherence.
"...shun copyright licensing altogether. When they do that, they put all their collaborators at risk and themselves face potential liability claims"
You're exposed to claims if you use someone else's code without permission. But if you simply fail to specify a licence for your own code you do not incur any risk.
"Since that convention [Berne] was put into place, all software development involve copying and derivatives, Phipps said; all programming without a license potentially infringes on copyright"
Complete rubbish. Because there is a Berne Convention, you have to copy code instead of writing something new??? Of course not.
Independent creation is a complete defense against any copyright claim (tho not against patent claims). Again, copying others' work without permission may infringe, but one's rights in one's own code do not depend on specifying any particular licence (as long as you don't sign away rights to someone else).
"That's why [if you want to start a new project] you need to apply for an open source license" (brackets in original, paraphrasing Phipps of OSI again)
More nonsense. As soon as you write some code, you own the copyright, and if you don't specify otherwise you retain all rights provided by statute. If you want it to be an open-source or "Free" (in the Stallman sense) project, you do need to specify a licence that allows others to contribute without risk of you suing them - but you don't have to "apply for" a licence. The latter phrase implies asking someone to grant you something, there is no such requirement. You're free to apply any licence of your choice to your own code, an existing one or make up a new one.
The part on "work for hire" is not as bad but still ambiguous on some points. Generally your employer can't claim rights in anything you do outside of your day job unless it is using code or ideas from the day job, or unless you signed away your rights in a contract. Using the employer's time or facilities would put your rights at risk.
I haven't read the rest but it is poorly written. There are better sources of info out there.
- ethomson 14y agoDisclaimer: IANAL > You're exposed to claims if you use someone else's code The article doesn't say that the author of the software is at risk if he/she shuns licensing. It say that their collaborators are at risk. Which is true. Because as you point out, "as soon as you write some code, you own the copyright." If you were to write some code and not place it under a legitimate open source license - "shun copyright licensing altogether" as the article states - then you have placed collaborators at risk. If I were to modify that code, redistribute it, etc, then I've taken on liability and you could sue me for infringing your copyright.
- jeffdavis 14y agoThe context of the article is collaborative open source development. People who collaborate copy code freely back and forth, so it's important to have a license.
- Nursie 14y agoYeah this - “That's why [if you want to start a new project] you need to apply for an open source license.” - is just weird. Maybe it's a misquote and for wasn't originally in there. Also don't really like this - "If you want public domain, use the MIT license" If you want public domain then use public domain, it's just that you need to know what that means. Perhaps you do know what that means and that's exactly what you want. What I would take from the article (about the only thing really) is that it's important to think about this stuff, and to think carefully before giving rights away.
- darkarmani 14y ago> You're exposed to claims if you use someone else's code without permission. But if you simply fail to specify a licence for your own code you do not incur any risk. I think they were thinking that if you open sourced your code, you were accepting patches and bug fixes. If your licensing didn't automatically extend to those patches, the patch owner would retain all rights to that section of your code.