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State Trooper Fights For His Source Code
BarneyRabble writes to tell us that a Wisconsin State Trooper is fighting to maintain control of the source code for a program he wrote that helps officers write traffic tickets electronically. Praised by the state just 18 months ago, Trooper David Meredith is now suing the head of patrol claiming that the state is trying to illegally seize the source that he had developed on his own time. From the article: "Meredith, of Oconto Falls, defied an order from his bosses to relinquish the source code - the heart of the program - in October and instead deposited it with Dane County Circuit Judge David T. Flanagan, pending a ruling on who should control it. The case centers on how the software was developed. Department of Transportation attorney Mike Kernats said the State Patrol - a division of DOT - provided Meredith with a computer to write the software and gave him time off patrol duties so he could do the work. But Meredith said in court filings that he spent hundreds of hours off duty working on it, developing it almost entirely on his own time. He noted that he never signed a software licensing agreement."
For once I find myself actually rooting for a cop! Next thing you know, Microsoft will be giving away Windows, and Wal-Mart will go bankrupt... Someone pinch me before I wake up.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
There's a donut joke in here somewhere...
"...The mice will see you now..."
Gee, I wonder which side /. will take...
Otherwise private business will implement it and we won't be able to get out of our speeding tickets. In this case we want the government to own it, since we all know how screwed up the source code become.
Only if Microsoft should be entitled to the source code of every Windows application ever written.
Yea, seriously. I mean, just look at the end of Revenge of the Nerds 2. The nerds ended up inside an army tank. We don't need a repeat of that.
A lot of people swear by it
;-)
Let me fix that for you.
A lot of people swear at it
There, thats better
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
In this case, it's "What cha gonna do when they code for you?"
Your sig: My info page is filling up with rejected posts. How can I purge these?
The real problem is that you obviously don't know how submit stories the "slashdot way." Here are some basic tips for submitting stories:
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While in normal circumstances this would be unacceptable, it is considered l33t on Slashdot.
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Example: "Given the fact that the format issues with high-definition optical disks have yet to be worked out, how can we foil further assaults on our Constitutional rights by George Bush?
4. Submit stories that are as polarizing as possible.
Example title: Totally Unknown and Unqualified Blogger Says Linux is Better Than Mac.
Example Text: 13-year-old student, Little Billy Ballinger, has issued his annual assessment of Operating Systems and Linux has come out on top. FTA: "As a guy who has only used my mom's spyware-laden Windows 98 machine, I find myself in a unique position to declare a winner in the OS wars--and I choose Linux."
Hah! Told ya, we know more than just growing soy and corn!
Ssh! Stop giving them ideas...
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. -- George Orwell
someone has seen into the heart of slashdot
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
I went to a public school, and can confidently state that no one learned anything of financial value there.
Storm Trooper Fights For His Source Code