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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."
What if the state claims that he was using their resources and knowledge about how ticket-system works?
Would that affect the case?
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...
...encouraged him and offered to let him use their resources (time at work and a PC) he should of asked for some kind of agreement in writing that it was his.
My boss is very liberal about what we do in the IT department as long as things are running smoothly and we get long term projects done on time. But even here I am careful to keep anything I might potentially think of as mine at home and off company equipment.
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
It does not matter how trivial. If you're into something like this, aways write it down and have the other part sign it. Period. I've had more than my share on this kind of issues and even turn some jobs down because of this so, better safe than sorry.
Scientia est Potentia
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.
I'm wondering if the fact that it may be a derivative work of Tracs could actually be a bigger issue. The article didn't make it clear whether he actually modified parts of Tracs or just wrote an interface to it.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Better yet: Make sure you know who is going to own the code before you write it.
2) Accepting a work computer and other considerations has *got* to seriously jeopardize his claim. For heaven's sake, do *not* accept anything like that for work which you want to own, unless you get explicit acknowledgment that your employer sees it the same way.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
The article says:
However, it goes on to state:
If he did indeed base his work off another piece of software (that was given to him on the condition that he not sell it commercially), then I don't think he really has a leg to stand on.
After reading the article, it seems he didn't develop the software from scratch but instead modified an already existing package. So, in other words he is calling the Wisconsin police department thieves for not letting him steal someone else's work.
My twitter
The police force should have never accepted the program without accompanying source code, or (worst case) some sort of license.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
In fact, in most cases if the work is any any way related to his work domain it's theirs even if they _didn't_ provide any resources, or at least they have a strong case to argue this.
He's wasting his time and the court's time, he can't win.
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.
It is pretty much always the case, the gov't will own the source on this one for many reasons.
1. Body of Employee Law
Since most employer/employee law leaves no room for interpreting "spare time" vs. "work time" other than how much money you have to lawyer-up he'll lose on this one because he'll run out of money defending his position.
2. Body of State/Fed Law
I know the Feds have a policy whereby they own the source on things written for them. It would not surprise me to hear this used as the "authority" whereby the code is taken.
What's sad is the guy has committed career suicide at this point and, if he hasn't already blown a bunch of money lawyering-up for the pricipal/principal(sp?) that this is his code.
Developers please note: This kind of theft of useful code/ideas is SOP in public service. If you have a great idea, develop it on your own time and find a completely unrelated avenue to promoting it. GPL is one way to go about this.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
So very true. The mere fact that he was using state resources probably is enough to do him in.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
In 2003, the state sent Meredith to Iowa to get trained on the Iowa Department of Transportation's Traffic and Criminal Software, or TraCS. Iowa gave Wisconsin the software for free on the condition that Wisconsin not develop the application for commercial purposes, said Kernats.
At the request of his superiors, Meredith tweaked the program so that it would work in Wisconsin and created a way to import driver information and criminal histories into it. The software that imports data saves time and prevents errors, said Jones, the union president
Dang, on the one hand he's praised for going beyond call of duty (great game too) and on the other he was assigned to the project by his bosses.
This Trooper isn't a programmer first, he's a cop, who does cop things like write speeding tickets (over 2k a year FTA).
He screwed up by doing what his bosses asked him to do without having paper in place to cover what would happen to his work.
They screwed up by asking a non-programmer (I sure he is a code wizard but he was hired to be cop first) to do something beyond their job description using personal skills and ultimately personal time.
Interesting enough, if I read it right, if the State gets control of the modified software, they won't be selling it for commercial gain, whereas it seems Mr Meredith is interested in making money off of his work, fair, but Iowa originally provided the software with a clause preventing that.
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
It's not that simple. Copyright law says a work-for-hire is "a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment." Court cases have determined that an employee that gets time off from other duties, and is provided work space and IT resources by the employer, can be commissioning a work-for-hire, whether a formal agreement exists or not.
No, make sure you write the code on your own computer and completely on your own time if you want to own it without a formal agreement.
Developers: We can use your help.
So, he was asked to write the software for work, he was given a (work) computer to develop the software with, and he was told to do it on the clock. That sounds to me like developing this software was part of his job descripton. If my boss put me in the same situation, I'd say the software was goes to him, no question.
The fact that he did it off the clock hardly seems like his boss' fault.
If I had to pick based on that info, well, he'd need to turn over his code. Regardless you can be sure that neither party will make these mistakes again.
Lets start refering to The War Against Terror by it's initials. . .
Corporations make you sign those agreements just to make sure they're covered. It's legally pretty clear that code you write on work time and on work computers is owned by your employer. These extra agreements cover edge cases and make sure no legal battle can even begin.
Not having a signed agreement does not make the code his. He was given time from work to write it and used his employer's computer. Therefore the code might be theirs.
Developers: We can use your help.
It looks like the base program comes from Iowa, which gave the program to Wisconsin under the condition that it not be sold commercially. Thus, the trooper cannot sell this program anymore than Microsoft could sell Red Hat Linux without releasing the source code for free. The trooper quite possibly has copyrights to the changes he made, but if so he can only sell the changes he made to someone who already has Iowa's program.
A fair solution would be the officer gives the rights to his employer, and his employer gives him a nice bonus for overtime work ($10,000-$20,000, depending on the amount of time he spent and the quality of the changes he made). If I were him I'd try to settle out of court.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Paraphrasing the FSF's recommendations:
* Write a little bit
* Go to your boss and say "I'll write the rest if you allow it to be Free Software"
* Get that in writing
* Be prepared to say "good luck getting someone else to finish the project" as you walk away
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/university.html
I work for a university, and I have explicitly talked to both the senior programmer and to our boss about developing FOSS on my own time (Do it both in person and over email -- so you have a record of the conversation).
If you write computer code and want to make sure that your company/university does not try to take it from you, you need to have that conversation. Send an email today!
coding is life
In this case, it's "What cha gonna do when they code for you?"
It's not that simple. Copyright law says a work-for-hire is "a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment." Court cases have determined that an employee that gets time off from other duties, and is provided work space and IT resources by the employer, can be commissioning a work-for-hire, whether a formal agreement exists or not.
Nor is it that simple either. A key word here is "scope." One important test is whether or not the employer is in business to create such works. So, a programmer employed by a software house and writing software is probably creating a work for hire. But the police are not in the business of creating software. So, even when provided resources and paid time to do the work, it does not necessarily follow that the result is a work for hire.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
He MAY be able to recover pay (even overtime) if he can show his superiors knew or should have known about the time he spent on it. I can't see him getting anything else. He's never going to be making millions off that software.
He could always destroy the source code instead of giving it to the state... and risk being sent to jail for a computer crime.
Sure...if you want to provide free software. In this case it seems obvious he wants the proprietary source code to be his to sell.
I doubt he thought that far ahead, or thought they were gonna screw him over it. Everything's easy with hindsight.
If it's anything like where I work, the cops think they can do anything and get away with it. Typically, they are quite right; They have done anything and gotten away with it. So it wouldn't surprise me in the least if he thought he'd be able to just coast on through this with that mentality.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
- if it is the kind of work the employee is paid to perform,
- occurs substantially within work hours at the work place, and
- is performed, at least in part, to serve the employer.
Not all have conditions have to be met, 2/3 is enough. e.g. Miller v. CP Chemicals Inc., F.Supp. 1238 (D.S.C. 1992) IANAL but it looks like the cop doesn't own what he wrote. FWIW: repost fromActually, try it like this: (The American Way)
God bless MLK, I got the day off.
I work as a contractor for the DOD. A few years ago, a government employee did that. He was the boss of the shop, developed a cool DB system. Quit. Opened his shop, sold his system. Profit.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
This is a unionized job. So there's a union contract in effect.
There's no intellectual property clause in that union contract. But there's an overtime clause, which provides for time and a half for overtime and includes the line "Implementation of alternative work patterns or any variation thereof shall be by mutual agreement between the Employer and the Union." That says "Employer and the Union", not "Employer and the Employee", as is standard in labor contracts. Any special deals on hours have to be done through the union. This prevents the employer from pressuring employees individually. Any special arrangements about working at home have to be cleared with the union, and, of course, that's paid time.
"Work for Hire" is a very explicit thing in a union job. The company does not own your life outside work.
Unions - the people who brought you the weekend.
However, the software is designed to handle policework, which is his business.
Do cops build their own service pistols?
Do cops build their own patrol cars?
Do cops build their own holding cells?
Building software for policework is no more in the normal scope of employment than the building of any of those others.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I expect the GPL-supporters to take the cop's side. GPL supporters are big on copyright, since copyright is the only thing that gives them any leverage to ask a business to align with them politically in order to use the software they indulge themselves in the illusion of offering "freely". If not for copyright, such "freely" given software would be possible to use freely. The same is true in the case of the cop. So, actually, I see quite a bit of suspense: I don't expect the entire community to own up to that.
Some contracts permit private development of stuff and some states enforce the right to do that notwithstanding contractual agreements, but in both cases (contract and state law) where I've seen it, it usually only applies to things done (a) on your own time, (b) using your own facilities, and (c) not directly related to your employment. Otherwise, it risks being a conflict of interest.
I'm not a lawyer, but the common sense of this seems obvious: It's wise to get an admission/agreement in some form from your employer before engaging in any activity that like this. I've had employers who have said "go ahead" and one employer who said "no way, anything you do whatsoever we'll own". In the latter case, the employer who said no didn't end up owning the thing because I didn't end up doing it, of course.
Some people like having a work-supplied PC, but anyone doing this kind of thing should avoid such things. Any hint that the employer contributed to the development sounds like a red flag to me, and that's what it sounds like happened in this article. If you do have a work-supplied computer, using it only for work, and using your own computer for other things seems the wise way to go.
Personally, I think the issue of the "expertise" he acquired by being a cop is not or should not be an issue. We all have knowledge, and knowledge/facts are explicitly exempted from copyright ownership, so the state cannot claim to own it, nor that he improperly used it elsewhere. Absent patenting (which let's all hope doesn't get involved), the only issue that seems material to me here is the code itself and how it was developed.
This particular case sounds messy from the point of view of establishing any kind of precedent. It sounds like an issue of people's personal privacy/property, but if he used facilities supplied by work, that makes it mixed as to principle. I feel bad for the guy, but it sounds like he's made some mistakes.
If I were sorting this out, I'd suggest that the State has no case for taking his software (sounds like a fourth amendment violation) unless he's compounded his set of mistakes by deploying it on machines accessible to them (which would complicate things even more), nor does he probably have a right to market it without their permission if they contributed financially (through use of material facilities). By adopting this posture, both parties have a reason to compromise. Probably the state should pay him some fee or royalty to get past this, if there's a benefit to them to doing so. If an appropriate price point is struck, both will agree, and things will move ahead.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
Hah! Told ya, we know more than just growing soy and corn!
Getting away from the basic premise of this discussion, but for a large part of "traffic" laws, yes.
... the purpose of the law is to cause justice to reign, is not a rigorously accurate statement. It ought to be stated that the purpose of the law is to prevent injustice from reigning. In fact, it is injustice, instead of justice, that has an existence of its own. Justice is achieved only when injustice is absent.
One of the best discussions presented on the subject of law is Frederick Bastiat's "The Law"
His book is presented primarily in the form of Natural Law, which is the fundemental principles our country was founded upon. One of my favorite statements from this book follows:
Depending on where you stand on the above, you can either believe the majority of traffic laws "prevent injustice" or not. Personally, I side against most of them.
someone has seen into the heart of slashdot
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
Of course, they might also abuse "eminent domain" for his code. I wish I were joking.
The officer is wrong on one point: this is a matter for Federal law. (The very same issue is why Novell was able to move SCO vs. Novell from Utah court to Federal Court.)
Federal law controls on copyight matters, overiding both state law and whatever contract he was (forced to) sign. And Federal law says that the program is his, and not the State of Wisconsin's, unless either (a) it was produced during the normal course of his working day; or (b) it was specifically commissioned in writing; or else (c) there is a signed written specific instrument of conveyance (US Code Title 17, Chapter 1 Section 101 and Chapter 2 Section 204).
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
The article is pretty vague about whether or not the code is a derived work of Iowa's TraCS, so let's assume it's not, since if it is, the case is extremely uninteresting.
In favor of the state:
It might be worth asking: how did the state obtain a copy of the program? If he admits there was no licensing agreement, then it sounds like he either developed it in-house, or he sold a copy of the binary to them. Or is he claiming he sold them a copy of the binary for $0 (a gift)?
That's ridiculous, and is in no way evidence that he did the work on his own time. A cop can write more tickets just by being an asshole. Time may be one variable in number of tickets, but attitude and contempt for the public can easily overcome that. Or, to put it more charitably, maybe he's a high-performing cop, very good at his job.
(BTW, the whole idea of whether or not writing code was within the scope of his duties is pretty alien to me, I guess because all my experience is with small companies. To me, anything an employer asks me to do is within the scope of my duties; the very idea of job descriptions (i.e. cop vs programmer) ever being the slightest bit relevant, is very weird to me. But I know it's a big world and different people have different types of employer relationships.)
The fact he had a state computer at home, is very bad for his case.
To tell the truth, though, I have a lot of sympathy for the guy. I suspect that what happened, is that he really was told to write the program in the line of duty, and he did so. Then, at some point, he got personally interested in the project, and gave of himself. Programming can be like that, and there have been numerous times that some problem that came up on the job, made me start thinking off the job. He probably did do some work (probably a lot) off the clock, because it's enjoyable. But how the hell do you separate the off-the-clock work from on-the-clock work, when it's the same kind of work? It's impossible. What's he going to do, turn in 42% of the source code? What a crappy situation. It's a shame he didn't do something totally unrelated to law enforcement, as his hobby. (Ah, but there's the rub: he wouldn't have expertise with the problem as a user. A cop knows what a cop needs.)
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
It is in fact well established in the civil engineering literature how to set speed limits so as to make the roads as safe as possible. However, it is also clear that speed limit setting is a matter of politics, not engineering.
I think it should be actionable for speed limits to be set this way (i.e., I think politicians should be liable in court for putting politics above engineering in matters of public safety. "Sovreign immunity" -- the doctrine that politicians have no legal responsibility for their actions -- is a vicious and pernicious doctrine.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
I was about to Google the law in California, out of personal curiosity, as to the rules of ownership of a copyright for works produced under certain employment circumstances. I found a very good article on Ownership of Copyrights, but sorting out who is right was giving me a headache.
I suspect the officer doesn't have a legal leg to stand on--but answering that question is going to require a peek at his employment contract, the work that was done, the other compensation or tools provided: in short, it's going to require lawyers and courts and judges to sort it out. Which is, sadly, the primary reason why we have lawyers, courts and judges.
Storm Trooper Fights For His Source Code
Try this: where the 35mph sign is there's a 3-year-old who escaped from his mother in the road. If you couldn't have stopped let alone slowed to 35mph you were going too fast.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
Remember back in the days of the Soviet Union when a programmer wrote the game Tetris? Do you know what happened? The Soviet Union seized the source code and full ownership. After the breakup of the Soviet Union the programmer got ownership back eventually.
GG US Government, your looking more like a Communist Soviet Clone everyday.
Personally I would have destroyed the source code and told my boss and the justice dept to suck it. Even with consequences in mind.
Support your local school shooter, give them your firearms.
Sure speed limits are political (politics root = state, or city) rather than engineering.
On engineering terms it would be fine for some roads in the middle of towns to be set at 100mph because many cars are engineered well enough to keep on those roads and turn off those roads under control going up to that speed.
But people aren't machines. Small children will run after their ball into the road, and 100mph cars and small children don't mix. So despite what the cars and roads are technically capable of, people aren't capable of reaching such engineering standards.
Speed limits out of town - well same issue - you as a healthy fit highly trained driver in your brand new Porsche might be able to do 150mph down a desert road but a little old guy in his old car might completely freak out if you drive at that speed right up to him. He might make a mistake because he is stressed by your high speed driving - pull in front of you, slam the brakes on, drive off the road etc. So a road accident might happen even though you are confident in your capacity.
Of course speed limits are about people, and not engineering. Speed limits are about making the road safe for the weakest and most vulnerable of legitimate road users, not about the strongest and most able. Machinery has surpassed our capacities a long time ago.