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.

Comments

Read a little more closely next time

[Spamalamadingdong]

it's ethically wrong in my opinion, since the students apparently haven't given you permission to do so.

Try again; it is not the instructor placing the work under the GPL (how could s/he? only the author can do that!). The issue is that of the students placing their own work under the GPL.

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.
--

Re:Read a little more closely next time

[MustardMan]

only the author can do that!

Not true. Only the copyright holder can do that. Many universities require that they become sole owner of submitted works, especially with theses and the like. While the professor himself couldn't GPL the code in such a case, he could certainly lobby the presiding body of the university (ie, board of trustees or the like) to do so.

Re:Read a little more closely next time

[norton_I]

Yeah, but right in the U of I guidelines it says:

1) In general, works of students remain the property of the student.

2) Work done for a graduate student thesis (ie, not classwork, but original research), software or otherwise is owned by the department, but may be given to the student at the discression of the department.

3) In any case, as a condition of receiving a degree, you implicitly give the university permission to use and distribute a "limited" number of copies of your thesis. (again, this is graduate thesis work, not classwork).

Occasionally, instructors will want to use your work in future years as an example, or framework for future projects. They always should, and usually do ask permission to do this. In this case, you would retain the copyright but give the instructor permission to use your work for teaching.

If your instructor provides you with a framework or skeleton code, you may own your modifications, but you don't automatically get rights to redistribute the combined work.

In short, if you are the sole author of your project, and want to GPL it and put it on Freshmeat, go ahead.

University of Texas

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

University of Alberta

[yamla]

I checked on this while an undergrad at the University of Alberta. I was told, as an undergrad, I owned any homework assignments or other work that I submitted, though professors and TAs owned the questions themselves and also any comments they gave you.

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.

--

Your Answer

[Penrif]

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.

GPL is not a virus.

[Sodium Attack]

A common source of confusion among /.ers about the GPL is the misconception that the GPL applies to software.

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.

Uh...no.

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

Re:The Uni owns it

[Azog]

Think of it as the university being your employer

Why should I think of the university as being my employer, when I'm the one paying to be there?

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)

a legal answer

[{tele}machus_*1]

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.