Slashdot Mirror
How to Deal With Stolen Code?
greenrom writes "I work for a small company as a software developer. While investigating a bug in one of our products, I found source code on a website that was nearly identical to code used in our product. Even the comments were the same. It's obvious that a developer at our company found some useful code on the web and copied it. The original author didn't attach any particular license to the code. It's just 200 lines of code the author posted in a forum. Is it legitimate to use source code that's publicly available but doesn't fall under any particular license? If not, what's the best way to deal with this kind of situation? Since I'm now the only person working on this code, there's no practical way to report the situation confidentially. I'm new to the company, and the developer who copied the code is the project lead. Reporting him to management doesn't seem like a good career move. I could rewrite the copied code without reporting him, but since the product is very close to release it would be difficult to make a significant change without providing some justification."
My blog
Or, depending on how the project lead is viewed in the company, this could be the fastest promotion you'll ever get.
Before you talk to anyone about this, do some discrete research about who might be sympathetic to your situation, who the lead's enemies are and think about just how much politics you want to get involved in
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Burning a $20 bill makes everybody (except you) richer. With a reduced money supply everybody else's dollar becomes more valuable. It takes a while to filter through to the labour market, but it does. That bill represent the wealth that you brought to everybody else so that one of them will give you something if you bring it to them. If you burn it instead, they still benefit from the work you did to earn that money, but now you won't be able to get them to give you stuff so they also get to keep the stuff and sell it to somebody else.
Camp A people would fire someone for taking the time to worry about this because it happens all the time and you're never going to get caught, and the original author of the code probably meant it to be public anyway, even though its illegal.
Camp B people would fire someone for NOT taking the time to worry about this because its illegal, regardless of intent of the original author and if it came to light it would expose the company to bad press and possibly litigation.
Camp C people have no earthly clue how copyright law actually works and are speaking out of their collective asses. Sadly, these people would most likely reason along the same lines as Camp A out of ignorance rather than malice and simply behave the same way with the exception that they don't realize they're breaking the law.
The original poster can certainly decide what kind of person he is (probably B since he asked the question in the first place) and can probably make a guess about what kind of people his employers are (I'm guessing A, again since he had to ask). Then you have to decide what is more important, your job or your ethics. It is a slippery slope when you first start copying code. I had a friend who copied code once. Now he professionally eats babies. True story.
The fact is that all the commonsense notions about how copyright law works or should work don't take into account that copyright law is not written by individuals, but largely by companies like Disney and Warner Brothers (among others), companies that have a vested interest in maintaining control over a certain mouse and rabbit (among others), both of whom would now long since be in the public domain if not for the endless succession of copyright extensions lobbied for by said corporations. Originally (well, since 1909) copyright expired after 28 years, or 56 if you decided to renew it. And this was a copyright you had to explicitly register. In 1976, copyright became automatic and consisted of life plus 50 years after the authors death (or a static 75 years for 'work for hire'). In 1998 it became life + 70 and either 120 years after creation, or 95 years after publication, whichever is sooner. Its interesting to note the effect on Mickey Mouse. Created in 1928, MM would have left copyrighted status (though still been covered under trademark restrictions) in 1984. Because of the 1976 act, that was pushed to 2003. The 1998 act pushed that back to 2023 at the earliest. So look for another copyright law in 2018 or so.
Jherico
What can the average user can do to ensure his security? "Nothing, you're screwed"
"If the author of the code posted it in a forum, I would personally call that implicit permission to use the code.Otherwise, why even post it? "
If the author of the song threw it in *a lot* of public mass media, I would personally call that implicit permission to use the song. Otherwise, why make it so public?
"As to the legality of downloading it, if it is showing in your browser window, you have already downloaded it."
As to the legality of downloading it, if it going out your speakers, you have already downloaded it.
While investigating a bug in one of our products, I found source code on a website that was nearly identical to code used in our product.
Was the bug within the copied code? Sometimes copyright isn't an issue with copied code. Its product quality.
The three instances of copied code I've found in our commercial product caused major headaches because the code got past QA and failed in the field. It didn't scale, had timing issues, etc.
In all three cases when I confronted the programmers they could not explain how "their" code worked. In all three cases I didn't have them fired. I made them fix it and apologize to the boss (who had to apologize to our customers).
As a result, I now have two decent programmers who write their own code. They ask for help when its needed instead of copying off of the internet.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
Remember the windows 2000 source code link. Most of the code in the TCP/IP stacks were from Novell. But did they have permission to use it? Who knows.
In this case though, I'd say public forum is public use. I've posted lots of code in forums as tutorials or tips. I'm not going to write a EULA or specify it must be GPL, LGPL, Mozilla Public License, EULA, BSD License, or make up my own. If I post it, and you find it useful, use it.
That said, if you have a really guilty conscience about it, they use the forum to contact the poster and see what he says. I'm sure he'll "say, yeah.. sure, whatever."
DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.