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Can University Students GPL Their Submitted Works?
Mdog asks: "I'm an instructor for The University of Illinois's CS 125 (intro to CS for CS Majors) class. I've been asking around the department regarding the legitimacy of students GPLing their submitted programs. Somebody pointed me to this document which talks about U of I policies regarding intelectual property. Having read the link, I'm still not quite sure what a students rights are in this situation, specifically part that reads that there exists a license which you implicilty agree to...:
'The minimum terms of such license shall grant the University the right to use the original work in its internally administered programs of teaching, research, and public service on a perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive basis.' Can I take this to mean: 'GPL compatible'? I'd be curious to know about anybody's experiences at other schools where this question has come up." I've seen several submissions where colleges take total posession of reports and projects created by students in their classes. Such a move would at least give the students some power in how their work is used.
At public universities, this work is partially publicly funded so it should end up in the public domain, or at worst, with a BSD or other unobtrusive (Apache or X) license on it.
Could you create two names for your project, one that is school-specific, and another name for GNU purposes? Then the project takes on two lifes, one where it maintained by the school if they decided to use it for whatever, and your own personal one for open sourcing it on your own?
-jc
From what you just said;
The minimum terms of such license shall grant the University the right to use the original work in its internally administered programs of teaching, research, and public service on a perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive basis.
Yeah, according to that, the GPL would be acceptable... It gives the University the right to use the original work for anything, perpetually, without royalties. The non-exclusive bits means that the student could license the software to someone else, too, on completely different terms. Doesn't really apply to your question, since it's up to the student whether the University has an exclusive license or not. It's just saying that the University doesn't *require* an exclusive license.
Dave
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
With that out of the way, I don't see how the university could object. The GPL gives the entire world a perpetual, royalty-free and non-exclusive license to use the code. Unless the university has some other clause which restricts what the student may allow the rest of the world to do, the GPL would appear to be entirely compatible with the U's terms.
--
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
At the University of Texas, we CS grad students are allowed by The University to publish our research code under the GPL. (Indeed, my research group is actively encouraged to do so by our advisor).
There is also an undergraduate software engineering class that requires you to do a team project, and the result of that is always put under the GPL. (One of the biggest challenges when I was the TA for that class was getting the students to understand that the couldn't just harvest the Web for code, images, etc., and publish the result under the GPL, or any other license for that matter.)
YUMV.
I would guess the situation is similar at most American public universities, but mine is a little more progressive than most in many other ways, so YMMV.
However, what in an intro to programming class could even be nontrivial enough to be covered by a license or copyright? There's a definite lower bound on the size of copyrightable software, and it's larger than most of the programs that most students write for intro classes. (Whether the code produced by intro programming students is worth disseminating is another matter which I'll leave to the trolls and cynics.)
Please note that this does not necessarily apply to graduate students. And it may well not apply to your own university.
Some people have pointed out that students never agreed that all their work should become property of their university. This is, of course, blatently false if (and only if) this is written down in the university code of conduct. I would imagine most universities state this.
--
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
4a: Ownership. Unless subject to any of the exceptions specified below or in Section 4(c), creators retain all rights to traditional academic copyrightable works as defined in Section 2(b) above.
4c: Student Works. Unless subject to the provisions of paragraph (a) or provided otherwise by written agreement, copyrightable works prepared by students as part of the requirements for a university degree program are deemed to be the property of the student but are subject to the following provisions:
4c 1&2 regard thesis work, which the University does take some credit in, seeing that it's the degree, basically.
Thanks for the document, I was about to start a similar search, I'm starting at UIUC in the fall.
Link it with a library, or include some code that is itself under the GPL.
The university may then 'own' it, but they can't distribute it without being bound by the GPL.
And i doubt any university would go so far as to ban the use of GPLed code, unless you study in Redmond.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
OK, before you start laughing so hard that milk comes out of your nose, hear me out. Of course the GPL is about software. But it limits the actions of people (and people-like organizations, such as corporations, universities, etc.) This is important to understand, because it reveals the flaw in the GPL-as-virus analogy which is commonly used to explain the GPL.
Suppose I, as the sole author of a piece of software, distribute it under the GPL. This does mean that anyone who licenses it under the terms of the GPL, must also make any derivative works available under the GPL. However, it is important to note what it does not mean: it does not mean that if I make a derivative work, that I have to release that under the GPL. It also does not mean that I cannot license the same software to someone else under a different, non-GPL compatible license. (If you took the GPL-as-virus analogy too far, you might well believe that these latter two were not allowed. But that is not the case. Just because some copies of a program are licensed under the GPL, does not mean that all copies are magically infected.)
With the UI policy, you license any software you submit to UI under a non-GPL license. (It seems to me that the implied license described in the linked document is not GPL-compatible; it might be well within the university's academic mission to provide students with the compiled version of the program, but not the source code, something forbidden under the GPL.) This does not prevent a student from making the software available to other people under the GPL, but he has already licensed it to the university under a non-GPL license when he submitted the program.
IANAL.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
Gee, what a valuable lesson. I wonder if it's been patented yet...
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
You said it right in the posting.
The university requires you (the copyright holder) to grant them (the university) a nonexclusive royalty free right to use the work however they want. Period.
It does not grant them 'ownership' of the data, it does not take your copyright away, it simply says they can do what they feel like with it once you give it to them, and you can't expect any compensation for it.
You are perfectly free to also release the code under the GPL (and the BSD license, and a proprietary one, and any other license you feel like, because the code is YOURS)
You'd like to think that, but that's not the way it works. Publically funded research (grants and such through the National Science Foundation) does not end up being in the public domain all the time. In some cases it does, but not in all. It's put into the public domain because of what the university decides to do with it, not because they *have* to. Mosaic is a good example. Publically funded, released with "copyrighted, but freely distributable for non-commercial use" on it. The university of illinois made a lot of money licensing it (not as much as they could have, but a lot).
The fact that they explicitly state that the license you grant them to use your work is non-exclusive means that you're free to also license others to use your work under other licenses (such as the GPL). If they had claimed an exclusive license to use your work, then you would not have been able to do so (as their license would be the only one allowed), but that doesn't appear to be the case.
So the short answer is yes, you can GPL your work.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I'm not so sure of this. At my school, in undergraduate classes of significant complexity, professors have no problem with students usuing publicly available code, as long as there is significant original content. If you are writing a spiffy new server that performs a fairly novel function for a networking class, no one minds if you make use of an existing bit of GPL code to parse and error check URL's on the client.
Yeah, infinite hello world is useless to GPL. But I've written some sizable bits of undergraduate code that I, or someone else, might want to use at some other point. If I did some research and found a solution to a problem that someone else might have to solve on the way to solving another problem, then GPLed code could prove to be of use. Allowing GPLing not only ensures that other people will be able to use it, but that the university cannot restrict your ability to re-use your own work in other areas.
An example: my roomate and a friend wrote a program for a DB class to do image queries by sketch. To do so, they needed something like a paint program. The professor was not interested in their ability to write paint; she wanted to see the scoring method that they had researched which promised to give better matches on image queries. They borrowed a GPL'ed paint program, which could have been written by some other kid at some other college, writing code for a graphic UI class, and adapted the code to work with the system. Two seperate, undergraduate level problems. No reason that one couldn't benefit from the other, however.
If my college, or the college of the lad who wrote the paint program, were more restrictive about GPL'ing and releasing projects done for the college, my roomate and his partner would have never finished. They would have wasted their time re-writing paint, instead of being able to implement their query algorithms. A really nifty project would have been impossible.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
Or do you get paid to go to university? If so, then it would make more sense that they own (or, at least have rights to) the work you do there.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
I have had to deal with UIUC IP legal people
though not regarding software. Go ask them
yourself. Second floor of Henry Administration
Building: U of I legal counsel office.
I have heard stories of professors forcing their students to release coursework under GPL (possibly apocryphal, but it has the ring of truth). In particular, in order to receive credit, the students were required to use a header file provided by the professor, which was covered by GPL. As a derivative work, all the resulting coursework inherited GPL.
So the question is again: who owns the work, and who decides what can be done with it? It's difficult to imagine that forcing someone to use GPL could have nefarious purposes, but imagine that some bright student could develop a novel algorithm, but deliberately holds it back because it might have commercial application? This could be particularly problematic in graduate EE/CS programs. The focal point of the licencing decision process should rest with the student.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
However, since it is non-exclusive, it does not prevent the student from ALSO releasing the code under the GPL, or any other license that doesn't restrict the University's license (e.g., by an exclusivity clause).
The "and public service" clause suggests that the University could itself publicly release the code under any license it sees fit.
First of all, I am a graduate from UIUC's CS program. The department is staunchly against student collaboration, and I think that's really the point here. Most instructors I had would give a zero for the first instance of cheating, and failure for the course on the second instance. Practically every MP (UIUC-speak for "programming assignment") was an individual assignment, except for about one or two small group assignments in my entire college career. Most instructors enforce the no collaboration quite strongly, and they have fairly sophisticated methods to detect collaboration.
The thing is, this goes straight in the face of the GPL, which is all about collaboration, and sharing. The two cultures are entirely incompatible. Sharing does not really make sense in basic undergrad CS education; your goal is really to weed out non-hackers, and make sure those who do stay are competent enough to do the work on their own.
Finally, little undergrad coursework is at all interesting to the outside world. When I took CS125 the only interesting MP was for a traffic simulation program, and the most inetersting MP's of my college career were data compression tools and file system implemtation. Of course, none of the stuff compares to existing software. I don't see how GPL'ing any of that stuff would benefit anybody.
Possibly the only really useful thing you could do is GPL the reference solutions after the asignment deadline. This has the potential to help off-campus students who are interested in learning the material without taking the course. But I certainly don't see how GPL'ing freshman's CS125 assignments will in any way make the world a better place.
DISCLAIMER: THE FOLLOWING WRITING REPRESENTS MY PERSONAL ANALYSIS OF THIS QUESTION. THIS ANALYSIS IS NOT MEANT TO BE, AND SHOULD NOT BE USED AS, LEGAL ADVICE. BY PUBLISHING THIS ANALYSIS, I DO NOT INTEND TO, AND DO NOT, CREATE A LAWYER-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP WITH ANYONE READING THIS ANALYSIS. THIS ANALYSIS SHOULD NOT BE RELIED UPON FOR ANY PURPOSE OTHER THAN THE READER'S OWN EDIFICATION. EVERYTHING WRITTEN HERE IS MY PERSONAL OPINION AND DOES NOT REPRESENT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER. SLASHDOT'S POLICY ON ATTORNEY INTERVIEWS IS EXPRESSLY INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE
The university's policy permits students to keep their broad copyright rights in their works, but requires students to provide the university with specific, limited licenses of use in certain situations. The first situation is original research and investigation (including software) produced by graduate students preparing their thesis. See Section 4.(c)(1)). My off-the-cuff interpretation of this section is that grad students keep the copyright in these original works, but the university gets to keep the work (remember copyright means one owns the rights of production, reproduction, and distribution of a work of original authorship). In other words, the university gets to keep research records, but arguably cannot do anything with it without the approval of the student who created it.
The second situation also applies to grad students. Grad students, in exchange for the award of their degree (as if tuition wasn't enough, geez), grant the university a right to retain, use, and distribute a limited number of copies of the thesis. This limited license also grants the university the right to require publication of the thesis, but only for archival use (i.e., sticking it on shelf in the library basement). Again, this license is limited. If a university decided to publish a student's thesis as book and sell it in every supermarket, that would clearly be a violation of the license. What might not be a violation is publication and distribution for a conference of only 50 people. (However, if the university printed and distributed 50 copies a year for several years, the student could probably sue for violation of the license.) Again, the student retains the copyright right in the work.
Although Section 4.(c) is entitled Student Works, the definition of "Traditional Academic Copyrightable Works" (Section 2.(b)) includes works that students might create. Therefore, Section 3.(b) might also apply to student works. Under Section 3.(b)(1), students retain all the rights to works that they create with usually and customarily provided university resources. Section 2.(d) defines "usually and customarily provided university resources." (The definition indicates that Section 3 probably only applies to works created by faculty, but, as mentioned above, Section 3 arguably applies to student works, too.) Section 3(b)(2) provides that works created with resources above and beyond those usually and customarily provided must be licensed to the university for internal use only. Again, I doubt that students would need to worry much about this provision, because most students (even grad students) are not given resources above and beyond those customarily provided. But if that were to happen, the student still retains all rights in the work. The license granted pursuant to Section 3.(b)(2) is extremely limited and only grants the university the right use the work, not to control its distribution or reproduction (except as those relate to its use). Overall, the student gets to keep the bulk of the copyright rights in student-created works.
Looking to the question of how this university policy interacts with the GPL, the issue becomes if a student publishes a work under the GPL, which license controls the University's rights: the GPL or the University policy? The University policy controls the University's behavior. This intellectual property policy is a contract that the student enters into with the university upon matriculation. The contract controls the relationship between the university and the student. However, it does not control the student's relationship with the outside world. Therefore, a piece of software published under the GPL is controlled by the GPL in its relationship with the world besides the university. There does not appear to be anything in the University's policies that would conflict with the GPL (although, I must admit here that I am not familiar with all the specific terms of the GPL, I only have a general idea of what it provides). The licenses granted to the university do not permit the university to control the distribution or reproduction of the work beyond the walls of the campus. Every license granted in the university policy is a license for royalty-free use. Use is a limited right, and it does not give the university the power to prevent others from using open-source code. These licenses are designed to prevent students from telling the university that it cannot use their works. (If you are distributing your software under the GPL, you couldn't cut off the university anyway).
The only area of possible conflict between the GPL and the university policy is in regard to original records (software) created in the process of thesis investigation. The university policy provides that the university owns these records. I do not know what "the original records of an investigation for a graduate thesis" might be, but my best guess is that they are the data that a student might accumulate in researching the thesis. I assume that if a student wrote software to analyze this data, this software might also be considered part of the original records. Therefore, the university might own the copyright for any software of this type. This would prevent that software from being distributed under the GPL because the university, not the student, would be the one to make the decision regarding licensing the work (because the university owns the copyright).
However, I say that the university might own the copyright because, as noted above, it is arguable that the university merely holds the property right to the physical copies of the records, but the student owns the copyright. This distinction is similar to a person owning a compact disk, but the artist owning the copyright to the music on the disk. The person can do anything with the physical disk (e.g., sell it, eat it, trade it), but the artist can control what the person does with the music on the disk (e.g., prevent the person from copying it for another person). Thus, the student might retain the right to control the production, reproduction, publication, and distribution of the original records, but the university gets to keep a copy of those records.
In summary, a student who creates software as part of the requirements for a degree program keeps all copyright rights, without granting any license to the university. (Section 4.(c)). A student in this situation can publish the software under the GPL, and the GPL will control the student's relationship with the University and the rest of the world. A student who creates a work subject to Section 4.(c)(2) can publish the software under the GPL, but the University policy controls the student's relationship with the university, while the GPL controls the student's relationship with the rest of the world. The University policy is not inconsistent with the GPL (and in fact, the GPL would control the University's behavior in areas not covered by the policy). Students who create works subject to Section 4.(c)(1) might lose all copyright right to those works. Arguably, though, the student retains the full copyright, university merely owns copies of these works.
IANAL, but...
Go read through the Copyright Act at the Cornell Legal Information Institute and you'll find that under the current (post-Berne-treqaty) copyright law, a work is automatically copyright by its author as soon as he/she saves it to disk. Moreover, the author for the purpose of copyright law is not a third party (i.e., the work is not a "work for hire") unless either it is made in the normal course of employment, or else there is an explicit written grant of title for the specific work in question.
Students are not ipso facto employees (lots of case law on that, but I don't have it at my fingertips).
A general college policy does not fit under the "specific written grant" provision, since it does not name the particular work in question.
OTOH, it is not unreasonable for a university to require the license for internal use of the students' works as a condition for granting a degree (fits the quid-pro-quo consideration required for a valid contract).
As for
I think that in these cases, it is entirely in order for the students in question to follow the precedents of the Software Publishing Association and the Scientologists. They should get an ex parte court order to go in with Federal marshals and sieze everything in sight to examine it for evidence of the copyright violations that have taken place. And then sue the socks off the bastards, both personally and corporately."My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"