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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
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.
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.
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.
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. . .
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.
Actually, 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.
someone has seen into the heart of slashdot
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
That is a very idealistic view of terms like Law and Justice. And, while I agree with your statements, I don't think that kind of rhetoric is helpful. Maybe traffic laws don't reduce injustice but they do serve an important purpose. They also need to be enforced, otherwise they are meaningless. Maybe law is the wrong term for what is really a rule in what could be defined as traffic protocol. You agree to following this protocol in exchange for the privilege of using a vehicle on public roads. A new institution could be setup for enforcing traffic protocol, which is completely separate from the police or any notion of justice. Would that really be any better?
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
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!"