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Ask Slashdot: What To Do When Another Dev Steals Your Work and Adds Their Name?
An anonymous reader writes "I have had an interesting situation arise where I built some web apps for a client about 2 years ago. I have no longer been working with the client and a new developer has taken over purely for maintenance work. Currently I have been looking for new work and have used the said apps as part of my portfolio. During one interview I was informed that I not telling the truth about building the apps and I was then shown the source of a few JS files. It seems the new developer had put a copyright header on them, removed my name as the author and put his own. Now this is grey territory as it the client who owns the source, not the contracting developer. It put me on my back foot and I had to start explaining to interviewers that the developer stole the work and branded it. I feel it makes me look like a fool, having to defend my position in an interview with a possible client and I feel I had lost the chance of directing the outcome of the interview. I have cut the apps from my portfolio, however they are some of my best work and a real testament to my skills. I decided to cut my loss and move on, I am not looking for a fight or any unnecessary heartache. So what you do in my situation?"
They shall all drown in lakes of blood. Now they will know why they are afraid of the dark. Now they will learn why they fear the night.
the sco trial is over man. you just had a bad dream, that's all.
summarizing the work you did, and identifying you as the original author of the code.
This isn't hard. Yahoo career advice stuff.
will not help with changing what already happened, but for the future put your work on github or some other similar service, keep the project private, then you can use that to prove precedence.
That sounds like a shitty situation, my condolences :(
I suspect the lawyer route is probably a bad idea, but I'd be really curious what a lawyer would have to say on the subject (at least here in Canada we have "moral" rights that dictate among other things an authors ownership of his work (even when it's "work for hire").
...and inform them of the unethical behavior of the new developer, the situation it put you in and how shocked you were to find that they had deprived you of the opportunity to take credit for your work. Somebody at that company hired you and knows what truly happened. Hopefully that person is in a position to put the situation right and give you the credit you are due.
That said, relying on your code being still accessible after you have left it for a while is not a situation you want to be in. Your former clients can take that code down and replace it any time they want, with anything they want. You should have checked to see the status of that code yourself shortly before you tried to present it as an example of your work.
This here. Refer people to the public repository that has commit dates etc.
If the original client won't cooperate, perhaps you could send a DMCA takedown notice asserting your ownership of the copyright for the original digital content.
Sometimes the "writing on the wall" is blood spatter...
Get a referral from the company.
If the copyright message is pointing to the maintainer rather than the company, you may want to point it out to the company since the new developer may be trying to claim ownership of the code (or may simply be naive).
Assuming it's work for hire / a client.. it would seem unreasonable to make the work public unless the client specifically allowed it?
Most of the people here don't give a rats about intellectual property unless they are ranting about how Hollywood and proprietary software's model is broken. When it's one of our own though, it's pitchforks and torches.
Have you considered that the people who argue the former aren't always the people who are upset by things such as this?
Smart move. Because that doesn't look like an admission of guilt at all.
Seriously, how difficult is it to prove that you were there before him?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Inform them of what's happened. Get them to send you a written & signed confirmation that you are the original author.
I decided to cut my loss and move on, I am not looking for a fight or any unnecessary heartache.
That's where you lost the battle. If this work is truly yours, there's usually a way to prove. I mean, I can read code and tell who dveloped it -- from the style. I mean, you could even point to older work you've done.
I just don't understand how you can let a fella claim ownership to work that's truly yours. You could at least do half a SCO...I mean, at least attempt to sue the fella.
How would that work? Your new prospective clients have no way of knowing you didn't just download somebody else's work and put your name on it. To show precedence, you would need client-verifiable dates on the files.
Have you seen the movie "Flash of Genius"? Seems like you are in that same situation. The real inventor of the code can explain every nook and crannies of the code, why they did what, and the circumstances that made them program something in a certain way rather than another. The fake programmer will say he/she has amnesia. They won't be explain the thing from ground up or the particulars (exciting moments) of the programming adventure.
The original contract should have specified who owns the source code. If it specified the company, then while your name could be on it as the original author, it belongs to the company and they have the right to modify it and the copyright. If no ownership was specified, then the developer owns it and their changing of the copyright was improper.
If indeed the company owns the copyright, did you have permission to retain a copy of it for use in your portfolio? If so, it's easily explained as the code was work performed under contract which you have the original source however the company subsequently modified it. Volunteer to walk through the code or otherwise show your expertise with it. Show them documentation that you worked for whatever company now owns the copyright, or even better documentation from the company that you have permission to include it in your portfolio.
The company you're hiring into has a right to question the claim that you wrote it in light of conflicting information and investigate further. And you have a right to defend yourself and explain the situation. If that does not satisfy the company, do you really want to work for a company that doesn't trust and believe you from the start of employment?
Pull the logs and other supporting information including client notes, change orders, SOWs, source code revision history, etc. and present it. . You can explain that it's a matter of principle that you're doing it because you value your good name. I think it's unlikely that you'll be retained by that company, but clearing it up may give the thief a bit of heat.
It has happened to me while working at UPS. One of the admins there stole my training guides and put his name on them.
1) Write to the client and to the developer explaining that it's pretty shitty to remove the original author's name (and in some cases, in some places, illegal) from a work. Explain that you'd appreciate it if your name was put back as the original author.
2) Keep the project in your profile, and if you get a negative or no response from the client and other dev, include a note saying that the other dev removed your name. And because you kept all the development files (you did, didn't you?), you can write in your profile that that in an interview you can show the progression of this project from start to end.
In the future:
* Always keep copies of files you have worked on (in a version control setup). (Especially useful if you keep the copyright. Reuse.)
* Never sign over copyright if you can help it (give clients a license instead, make it BSD-like and they can still do whatever they want, except remove your name).
* Include a clause in your contract (and you do have a contract before commencing work, don't you?) saying that the work can be included in your profile, along with a comment (praise or whatever) from the client. Link this comment to the client's website or contact details.
* And in the rare situation that the client wants you to both hand over copyright, and not retain any of the code, then demand triple or more of your usual rate. Explain that this is to offset future loses from not being able to demonstrate your awesomeness. If they don't blink, you should have asked for ten times or more.
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
The code you developed for your client was most likely never yours to begin with. Despite well-meaning suggestions made here, you really have no right to go back to the client and demand anything. Present the code as your own to prospective clients, explain the situation, and leave it at that.
We all have fantasies of getting back at assholes like the one you described, but in the real world, you just need to take the high road and let it go. From the description you gave, it sounds like you're new to the game. Focus your creative energies on your work, not on vengeance. Your integrity and professionalism will remain intact, which is much more important than striking back at some perceived slight.
Don't remove the apps from your resume and contact your previous employer. Try to explain the situation. I'm sure this is some kind of fraud. If you can prove that you designed the system, you should insist that your name is in the source.
If the company owns the code and its copyright how exactly is it fraud? They can change the code however they want due to being the copyright owners.
Yeah, because when I download a movie, I replace all of the credits with my name and try to pass off to potential employers that I was wholly responsible for the film. Unless it's an Abrams film... he can keep those.
Owns that code since you did it for them. You could point out that if this new client uses that code they'd be in deep shit since it's basically stolen and you'd have no problem letting the old client know.(Since hopefully they could sick a pack of lawyers on people.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
you have commit dates, if the change copyright on your file is newer, there is your proof
you also have the commit history, better proof than anything, unless they suspect you faked hundreds of commits and bug fixes
I cannot remember anyone claiming that artist should not be credited. There have been arguments that you should be allowed to copy their stuff for free, but I've never ever seen anyone claiming that you should be allowed to claim you had written that stuff if you haven't.
Or in short: There's a difference between copying and plagiarism.
What the submitter complains about is plagiarism, not copying. From his submission, there's no indication about how he thinks about copying.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
You could enhance and refactor them so they not only differentiate from your earlier purloined version but also provide a better example. Then if the question comes up you can easily say he swiped an earlier version of my work.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
I just read about this case yesterday. Funny.
One of the undercurrents in this whole thread is that we have no idea whether OP is telling the truth or not. There's a signficant chance s/he's jerking everyone around so s/he can forward this link to a hiring employer. How can we tell the difference? I think OP, if he's telling the truth, has to figure out what can prove they were the real author, besides the obvious of calling the client they did the work for (Duh!). That's something that can't be thought of from a one (long) paragraph summary.
It is what it is. You developed it.
The software was that good that the company you worked for then finds your work good enough to continue developing it.
You could ask that company for a testimonial to add to your resume.
Privacy is terrorism.
you have commit dates, if the change copyright on your file is newer, there is your proof
you also have the commit history, better proof than anything, unless they suspect you faked hundreds of commits and bug fixes
That would work, but it would be unethical for a developer to commit his code to a publicly-accessible server without client permission to do so.
Normally belongs to the company you work for, not the person who wrote it. It's not grey territory at all. If you find the author has been changed then the reason for change could be as simple as providing a means to get in touch with the person who is now maintaining it. If I'm amending code produced by someone else I normally add myself to any authors in the documentation, but occasionally the previous dev has not put any documentation in the code, so my boilerplate documentation may not mention the previous developer if I'm in a hurry.
A lot of companies are increasingly unwilling to produce references beyond "so and so worked here". Nowadays, I try to get a technical reference letter before I leave a company detailing the work I did, in a form that does not give away any company secrets.
Some tracing can be achieved without much compromise to company security by having Subversion or whatever version control system you're using send emails to you whenever you update code. That way you have a personal audit trail of work you've done.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
You spelled "Uwe Boll" wrong...
I don't know about American law, but I'm pretty sure that according to German law while they are certainly allowed to change the code however they like, they are not allowed to lie about who wrote it. Note that, according to the submission the copyright header named the maintenance developer. Things would be different if it just named the company.
Indeed, the company might be very interested to learn about this case, because as the submitter wrote it, it sounds as if the maintenance programmer actually defrauded the company by effectively claiming he owns the copyright.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Instead, replicate the work as best you can on your own servers. Heck, while you're at it, make those improvements you would have made after you wrote it originally.
If it's not on my own infrastructure, it doesn't go on my resume.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
1. If you were an employee of the former company, show paystubs or Forms W2 showing dates prior to the copyright date.
2. If you were an independent contractor on that work, show invoices.
3. In the future, make copies of the source files. ZIP, Gzip, or otherwise combine them into a single file. Use an OpenPGP application to create a detached digital signature of that single file. Send the digital signature file to a time-stamping service such as pgp@stamper.itconsult.co.uk and save the result. All this will provide proof of the prior nature of your work and also invalidate and later claim of copyright or patent.
Huh? That's like saying you can't commit fraud because you own the paper that the fraudulent document is printed on.
Don't put it in a public repo, that's likely to seriously piss off the client. Instead, do the work in a local git repo on your machine (committing from there to your client's repo, if they use one) so you can show the whole development process. When the project is complete, burn a copy of the repo to cd and get it notarised, or maybe use a CA's time-stamping service on the repo file.
not public, keep the project private and show the details only if there is need
Via say the wayback machine or if the client allows it key elements on a owned server. Otherwise the site will move on from what you developed.
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
yes, you can set up your own private svn/git/whatever server and browser and fake the commit dates, but spoofing github or bitbucket or sourceforge would be a lot more difficult, and would not fool many
It really sounds like they tried to confront you in a "Now I've Got You, You SOB!" style of transaction. If that is what happened, avoid doing business with that client, ever.
If the client asked you what they should make of the copyright notices, that's one thing. If they immediately called you a "liar," that's another. If the latter is what happened, again, set them straight as to what happened, then don't ever talk to them again.
+1 Interesting
Could be that the old client is trying to fsck OP over. In which case, there's not much he can do, as the client/owner of the code isn't likely going to provide evidence of his authorship.
Its possible that the old client is also trying to screw over the new client, by scaring off talent. Either way, if I were OP, I'd just walk away. Any potential employer that gets involved in these kinds of games, or isn't aware of their existence isn't going to be around for much longer.
Any of these activities could have severe legal or reputational consequences. So anyone who plays them must either be expecting a big payoff (ask the question: what's the motivation). Or they are sociopaths.
Have gnu, will travel.
Get yourself a GitHub account and ensure that you keep your work there, When all else fails, the timestamps should prove to be your proof.
The main retort is to challenge the assertion and offer to answer low-level detailed questions about the design and the code. His main defense will be to claim the software is "confidential" so he doesn't have to talk about it in-depth. It is up to the interviewer to decide who s/he is more comfortable hiring. I once had the pure luxury of reading a resume from a contractor whom I had worked with briefly at a previous company. His resume took credit for MY WORK. Because the code is at the old place there was no way to check the source. I showed that resume to my coworkers, many of whom worked with me previously on that same project, and they all agreed emphatically that this guy totally lied. The result was his resume got a giant DO NOT HIRE mark, he was never interviewed, and of course he never worked with us again. But I'm sure subsequent places very likely hired him on the basis of MY WORK. Getting back to my point, there is absolutely no way he could have described my work in the same detail that I could, so though I can't prevent him from using my work to get contract gigs, if it ever comes up I can certainly go into extremely low level gory detail on every aspect, enough I think to convince anybody that this guy is a poser and I'm not. The reality is in the contracting world though that this guy will live and die by his reputation. I guarantee if I ever see him again I will remember his deceit, and will make every effort to block him from being hired. And will be happy to tell anyone calling for an outside reference what to look for on the resume, and if it's there, refute its accuracy. At that point the hiring manager can decide if anything else is true, and decide accordingly. After all, maybe what their team really needs is a good liar, who knows.
OP probably can't get back into his old client's version control system to demonstrate the code's history.
Have gnu, will travel.
http://web.archive.org/
Have them lookup the site and view the original JS file's source.
Information, when copied at one's own cost, does not take that information away from the original owner. Credit, when taken, is taken away from the original owner. Your notion of intellectual property falls on its ass when you try to to equate it to material goods. Credit, however, maintains the same basic rules as physical property: Claiming it for yourself, even at your own cost, does take it away from the original owner.
Mind the frickin' laser...
Contact your old client and discuss the situation. Make sure you go above the web developers head. Don't try and rock the boat too much, it is their code, but explain the trouble it has given you for your portfolio and that you would like some credit as well if they are going to put specific names in the copyright notice.
People are reasonable and you're not asking for anything that will affect their bottom line or reveal any confidential info. Just be reasonable yourself about it.
As you state "the client who owns the source". You shouldn't be showing the code that isn't yours. As long as there isn't a NDA you are free to list the work on your resume/CV but unless your contract gave you explicit rights to include the work in your portfolio then you can't show the code. If it was Java or C# or anything but JavaScript this wouldn't be an issue because you and your future employer wouldn't have access to the code in question, treat JavaScript the same way. If you need code to show in a portfolio then you should be committing to open source projects. Think of GitHub as your portfolio.
My Hello World is 512 bytes. But it's also a valid Fat12 boot sector, Fat12 file reader, and Pmode routine.
What do you do when some other developer writes total shit and puts your name on it?
As one might imagine, this is not hypothetical.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
In the context of an interview the fact that the source was presented could be a perfect opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge of the code by offering to explain its operation and the design decisions that came about during development. Your skills are better proven in how you articulate your knowledge and ideas rather than just pointing to a name on a comment banner. A major lesson learned would be to expect this and to keep cool and not look flustered when someone tries to call you out on it. If you had an amicable relationship with this former employer you might even touch base with them ahead of time to ask if you can list them as a reference so they can corroborate your authorship.
Account -> Discussions -> Disable Sigs
The issue can still come up of they look at the source on his own infrastructure, and then search for it on google and find the previous company. When I've been asked to look at a job candidates resume and sample code submission searching for distinctive phrases or lines and quickly found one or more sources that were similar enough to exclude the candidate.
I wouldn't want to put my name on code by someone who had to put his name on my code in the first place because he was so crappy. That's like someone putting his name on my masterpiece work of art, and in retaliation I put my name on his stick-figure drawing.
There may not be bad intent here. The company may have wanted him to do this so anyone trying to contact the author would contact him, rather than you, who are no longer part of the company (and may have bad things to say about the company or the product).
You should really just contact them and work it out from there.
This is certainly the best solution.
Not only that, but you should be able to demonstrate you could write the code, and explain that this was a while ago and has gone through many revisions.
This has happened to me on many occasions doing contract work - and has never been an issue. My name is not always publicly displayed on my code.
If your new potential employer refuses to understand that, then the trust between you and your new employer has already broken down - I would recommend not working for them.
If the code is owned by your client, then the developers name has nothing to do in it. At the company where i work the only reference to persons is in the log entries.
Tell your prospective client that they may verify who did that by calling the first customer. There is a good chance that if they take this information and assume that you lie without even one step of verification, you probably dont want to work for them. People stealing attibutions is so common that i would anyway ask twice.
How ever this is a great example as to why you keep a copy of all the work you do with timestamps and revision control. Then when some ass hole takes the work and tries to run with it you can always show the originals.
The server itself is still public and it isn't your code to commit. You are being paid, generally, to create code for someone else; thus it is their code. This means that you are putting the code on an outside host of unknown security, and is still wrong.
You are assuming github security is 100% reliable. I don't know how exactly they have it set up, but it seems likely that github employees at least would have unfettered access, plus anyone who successfully gained illegitimate access, or who happened upon it while there was a mis-configured server.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Why would it be more difficult. Create the git repository locally, change the dates on all the files (or run your machine at an earlier date). Then push to Github, github then takes the dates of the original git repo that you had locally. Not hard to fake at all.
When you work for someone else as a contractor, you can't just do this. You should spell it out in your contract or whatever before you work for them that you will be archiving your work for reference material for the purposes of demonstrating it to future clients.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I don't think it's unethical at all. While you can't use the code, you have fair-use rights to it for educational purposes. the purpose of educating prospective employers what you can do.
Use code obfuscation to make the code unmaintainable, then only you can work from the original, clean source.
The two cases are closer than you think. The poster is complaining about credit for the code because it directly impacts his ability to generate income. Similarly, when "information" such as software is copied without permission, it deducts from the revenue of the creator. In each case, the creator is losing income.
Agree: this is more about credit than about copyright.
If you had built a bridge for your city, you should be able to list that as one of your accomplishments. It does not mean that you can walk off with the bridge. At the same time, you'd be perfectly justified in getting pissed off if someone else said that it was they, not you, who had built it.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
Even then: there is a difference between "ownership" or "intellectual property" (what many here dismiss) and getting credit where it is due (this case).
It's like in science: scientists (many /. posters among them btw) don't care about who copies their work, as long as their name is in the history books. Most free/open source software: the same story.
Simply putting up a copyright, and a name of the current maintainer, _corporate employee_ who is responsible for maintaining the software, is not a large offense where I work. If you did not sign it at all, it could even be unsurprising that a newer developer would do so, to provide a contact point for users of the software, especially if hte copyright is a corporate copyright and not a personal one. They may even think they modified it enough to deserve a new copyright (which can be very easy to do), even if some of the best core components are essentially unchanged.
So there seems no need to start out heavy handed. Also, you're showing off in your interview that was done as a work for hire? Did you get permission from your former employer to display or share that work? Then you may be violating _their_ copyrights. So be safe: contact them, especially your old manager if you can find them, and ask for permission to show your old work, and see if you can cite them as a reference for doing that work.
If the new developer is actually plagiarizing your work and re-copyrighting it for themselves personally, your old employer is the one being hurt by this. Then you may need to show some traceable source control or software backups to enforce the claim. And you may be able to get cooperation from supervisors or HR at your old workplace. It could be awfully hard to sue for damages in a situation like this,, especially if you don't have good evidence. But someone who is plagiarizing your work will probably plagiarize other work, and a good manager will appreciate a heads up from the original author. This has happened to me and my colleagues before, and will again. It may be too late for you to follow good source code control practices, but those can be invaluable not only to locate who write the code, but who _broke_ the code later.
If you've got your evidence lined up, you might even be able to contact this developer directly and give them the opportunity to fix the situation. If they can provide a letter that says "this work was originally developed for Company A by _fill in your name_, and we're delighted with its performance.", I think you'd be in very good shape for the questions you w4ere asked.
Usually when software is developed for a payment, the copyrights lie with the organisation paying the money, not with the developer, except when specified otherwise, which rarely happens. Many employment contracts even state that all software developed is owned by the company you work for, including software you develop in your private time. The reason for this being that you are not supposed to work (paid or unpaid) without written permission from your employer, and that there is often a thin line between what you do for your work and what not. In most cases employers don't mind you develop software in your private time and claim copyright, but there might be cases in which they might want to claim copyright, when for example, you develop some algorithm using knowledge you learned while working at your company that in someway could be profitable for your company.
I and my colleagues prefer to do this, especially because we prefer open source code. It's often not feasible: on my current project the company wants all its code kept in-house, and even with a GPL copyright on the original work there is no obligation to publish it.
Go public, name names, name the apps ...
AccountKiller
Arguing against insane IP laws does not equate to justifying plagiarism. It's perfectly acceptable to use Einstein's work in the creation of a physics paper. It's entirely WRONG to claim any part of Einstein's work as your own.
Even in the open source world, it's perfectly fine to use other people's work, as long as you don't attempt to take credit for their work. When you alter someone's open source application, you leave all the credits in place, merely adding your own name with your own contribution to the application.
When was the last time you saw someone being prosecuted for putting their own credits at the tail end of a Hollywood movie? It simply doesn't happen.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
wtf is this? fair use? we're not talking a copyright of a book, we're talking somebody's property. do I have fair-use rights to use your house for educational purposes?
Github still keeps track of when you push, which is independent of what the local repository claims. AFAIK that can't be forged.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
Or on some third person's masterpiece that also has his name on it.
well, since it's your original work, it shouldn't be hard to show the original and the contract of the original client. Also you propably would be able to use that specific client as a reference..
But then again, there are a lot of frauds out there using other people's work to get ahead... but a lot of people are also using the internet as a source for helping them get the job done, which also means a lot of code will look a lot like each other as people are using the same forums/sites for help..
The submitter probably doesn't have access to their version control.
However, if they can show their work remotely, they could easily find an archive.org link to an older version. I believe javascript files are archived just like everything else. This could possibly be useful if the submitter decides to take legal action -- I think they have some grounds to do so.
Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.
do I have fair-use rights to use your house for educational purposes?
What a great comparison! Monopolies over ideas are definitely the same as physical objects that belong to people.
All the Lawyer needs to do is send a letter asking 3 questions.
1) Between what dates did the OP work (Person A) for the client ?
2) Between what dates did the new developer (Person B) take over work for the client ?
3) When was the first use by the company (in-house or commercial) of the specified code ?
If the answer to Q3 is in the range of Person A's time at the company and outside the range of Person B then matter solved. ... ...
If not then hard luck unless you have corroborating evidence that you created it (work emails / memos / Letters about the code from your boss to you.)
Then in that case only winner is the lawyer...
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
Your point is valid, certainly. However, I would hope that any employer's code vetting process would account for a certain amount of reuse as well as possible copying of source. When you think about it, all web-oriented javascript/html/css on a public site is, effectively, public code.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Interviewer - "We checked the source code cited, and your name isn't on it?"
You - "Thanks for checking the source code, that was work for hire, so it's owned by the company I wrote it for, so while I'm disappointed my name was removed from the source, they own it so they decide, I can cover some of the features if that would help?'
The above shows that you clearly understand work for hire is owned by the entity that hired you. You expressed your personal opinion while remaining professional about what happened, and providing a reasonable way to prove you at least understand the code.
If they go so far as to say you lied, then do you honestly, really, want to work for them? Do you want to be dealing with them when you submit your bill?
If they approached this more professionally and said something like 'Oh we could see how that could happen, maybe you can describe the challenges in that software and the solution' then you should be able to convince any reasonable person that you at least grok the problem, and explain your solution.
They can then follow up with another question, and you've avoided the pain.
We've all had interviews where the interviewer was just an incredible jack-ass. They may be intimidated by you, they may be just an incredibly insecure person or having a terrible day and acting poorly. The best way to act if at all possible is always to be professional. Give your answers, they can take them or leave them.
Remember this part if you remember anything. You are interviewing them just as much as they are interviewing you. Yes you have to pay your bills, and feed yourself (and possibly your family), but don't go into this from a position of weakness. You are a valuable commodity, and it's their job to convince you to decide to spend the finite allotment of time we have during your lifetime working for them just as much as you may want the job.
Many technology professions and engineers are uncomfortable with negotiating. Don't be. If everyone in IT could learn that one lesson, that being hired whether it's contract or full-time is a negotiation goes a long way.
If you are dealing with a less tech-savy more 'business' orientated person you will win points (even if grudging) that "Damn this technology person can actually negotiate and isn't a nerd who would work for star-trek lunchtime showings"
If you are dealing with a more tech-savy person they probably won't be focused at all on the business side of things and you can discuss shop talk - discuss honestly some 'pain' (without dissing any company or individual) and often you can throw in a small amount of humor. When interviewing for a technology position it's a big plus to meet a candidate who can admit things that were tried that were disasters that they worked through.
If the interviewer has any scar-tissue at all they will understand you have been in the trenches and had things go wrong, and you can explain how you worked around it. The solution may not have been pretty or elegant but it got you and the company you were working with through the problem.
Someone who can think of their feet, evaluate what's going on, make a decision and adapt to save the ship is worth a ton. There are so many people in technology who search for silver bullets and are so enamored with X, whether it's hardware or software architecture that showing this helps hugely.
I don't think it's unethical at all. While you can't use the code, you have fair-use rights to it for educational purposes. the purpose of educating prospective employers what you can do.
hahahaa.
yeah. sure. when it's quite easy to end up on projects that you're not allowed to even fucking put on the cv then yeah SUUURE you can keep the source for purposes of getting hired on your next gig.
just think about it for a moment there. you would be copying business secrets of your old company and showing them to your next company. . hell, just the commit dates and how fast the sw was produced is technically a secret.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Talk to a lawyer.
Not primarily to sue the other guy, though that might be a result. But you need to check with someone who is as much an expert in law as you are an expert in code just what's going on.
Did you ever really own the copyright on those files? Copyright is a legal term, even though we coders often use it as a name tag. You may have never had the right to write "(C) by me" in there in the first place if it was a work-for-hire for your client, in which case they own the copyright.
What did the contract you had with them specify regarding rights?
Finally, talk to him about how to put your name in for the future in a proper way. Maybe "(C) by me" should be replaced by "written by me (year)" and your future contracts specify that the client may not remove that line (though he may add further ones if other people take over and add their own code).
Often, a friendly lawyer that you find through a personal contact will be willing to give not-legal-advise over a meal or drinks. Lawyers are the geeks of the business world.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I was once in a similar situation, except in my case, I was hired by one of the partners in a business (at least, that was what he told me he was) to build a portal for the employees to log their work, and upload maps into their server. It was a ~8k line classic .asp website with a little JavaScript, nothing fancy, but a fair amount of code under the hood, as they had a lot of employees across the state logging in and uploading/accessing maps, and they wanted it all logged, and had some fancy things they wanted done with the files they uploaded (keyword extraction, etc.) After I delivered the files (they were hosting them on an in-house Windows 2003 server), the guy immediately went in and removed all of my copyright notices and changed my name to his on everything, before he had even fully tested it, then told his employer (who had actually hired him to build and maintain the site, as I learned later) that it was all his work. Then about 2 weeks later something broke (that's what happens when a site isn't really tested -- he wanted me to build and deliver it, then leave it for him to test), and he called me and wanted me to fix it for free over the phone (he didn't want me to see that he'd taken all of my credit out of the source), and after spending several hours on the phone with him over several days, I told him that I couldn't fix it without looking at the source myself. He begrudgingly gave me FTP access, and after taking care of the glitch, I told him I wasn't helping him with it again, after seeing what he'd done. A week later he called asking for more help. In my case, I simply threatened to talk to his boss, and that got rid of him, but I can't really show anyone what I built on their server, since my name's been removed. What I've done since then was to upload it all to my server (where it works perfectly), with all their branding removed, and showed that to people. I've actually started doing that with all of my web development -- it seems that the buyer always does something to damage the site if they don't keep me on to maintain it, so it's better to just show off the original version that I built, on my own server.
Assuming the story is true, take a look what he says: happened several times, in each and every case by someone in India. That already gives a hint that this might happen statistically more often in India. No need for racism, but it leads to suspect they have some bad practices in India.
Well, do they have an SCM system there to keep the source code?
If yes, you've got your answer. If not, the code is probably not worth getting authorship anyway.
what does it matter if he doesn't have access to said system? they probably lifted the JS from a webapp deployment. generally such isn't even meant to be read.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
This is defined in your contract with the client. It is common for the developer to retain ownership of the code, but to grant an unlimited license to the client. This is common practice, since it prevents a client from suing you when you use similar code or techniques in a future project (perhaps on of their competitors). If a potential client wants me to actually hand over ownership, then they get a different price.
I'm not a lawyer, but unless your former employer has granted you permission to share this code with those you are showing it to you are probably in violation of your original contract. If you wrote code for a client and you think that you have a legitimate copyright to that code you should see a lawyer about it. Most of the time code written as a contractor is "works for hire" and you have no such rights. The code is not copyright because you wrote it under a contract for some other legal entity.
I would stop showing any code to potential clients, though you should be able to talk about most of your previous experience in enough detail to demonstrate that you have what they want.
Dadmin fixes it while you sleep.
recant or get beaten. Whether by you or by a judge is at the end of the day up to you. At the end of the day that's what the justice system is supposed to be for. Whether you want to go through it or cut the middle man really depends on what code of ethics you subscribe to. I had a similar issue with OpenROV recently: I built all of the electronics for the OpenROV prototype that won editor's choice award for make magazine in 2011. I was supposed to present the thing with the people who actually got to present it, but stayed home to deal with a friend's panic attack instead. So they went and turned what for me was a 3 week project into their life's work (good for them). I told one of them that if he returned the award to me, he would live. He returned the award to me at Maker Faire this year, we shook hands, and he lived. Pretty simple, really. Nobody got hurt, there was no fight, he still gets to sell OpenROVs, and I get to be vindicated. Still waiting for a retraction from Make, but they'll get around to it. The bottom line is, whether you go through the law or settle this like gentlemen, it has to be settled; every issue like this that isn't settled hurts the community as a whole.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM8KpIzs-O4
* Carthago Delenda Est *
why not do the easy thing and politely inform the client? I am sure if you have a good working relationship with them it wouldn't be a problem to credit you.
me fail english? thats unpossible
He steel your work. Yes, could be a headache, find an attorney and so on. But, left behind, will only stimulate these kind of action. In your situation, I will find an attorney that accept this case to receive the payment for the damages. Or Better, call the Company, and advise then.
Won't help your current situation, but in the future consider routinely dropping some standard personal easter eggs into your code. You need to invent your own obscure bag of tricks, but some silly examples would be that stringing together the 3rd letter of each of the first 10 variable names spells your name, or trivially encrypted words in numeric constants or variable names. It's been done in literature for years, for example http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-05/pl_print
Yeah, I know you can supposedly hear "Paul is dead" if you play a certain Beatles track backwards. This isn't the kind of "proof" that would send someone to prison, but being able to demonstrate a few such little flourishes should be plenty enough to buy you the benefit of the doubt and likely constitute probable cause for an investigation.
Most importantly, SHUT UP and don't tell ANYBODY what your secrets are unless you're up against the wall. Even then, don't spill all of 'em. This is security by obscurity -- not an opportunity to show your friends how clever your little treasures are. People talk.
Much more useful than seeing code with someone's name on it is hearing that person describe the code. If someone calls you on it, offer to explain the design of the code, the decisions and tradeoffs made along the way, and what you'd improve next, or how you left the code in a state to be more easily maintained (by you or others) in the future. That would feel *much* more useful than seeing your name on it, and would take you a fraction of the time invested to get it done.
Produce it, along with the specification and the invoice for the work, with irrelevant details redacted (like how much you were paid).
The fact that you have specific project documentation should be ample evidence that you are the original author. All that needs to be done for verification is to have the new client phone the old client and ask if they had indeed contracted with you for a piece of work. No other specifics.
You could have even phoned the old client from the new client's place of business and asked the old client to verify it right there, as long as you have good reason to expect the old client to tell the truth.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
they hired somebody else to make changes to the website he originally built and that new developer changed the guys name on all the files. Technically the files belong to the company he did the work for, they paid for they can do what they want. it's more of a kick in the teeth that they scrubbed his name from the work as the original author. Arguing about if it's legal or not doesn't really change the fact the guy went to an interview to show his code he wrote and the original site had his name stripped make it look like he was plagiarizing his own work.
like another poster said, he should have checked how his previous work was being used "right now" before presenting it... if only to catch those little surprises like this that make HIM look like an ass an he really can't take that back now.
This comment was modded down simply because the truth hurts. But its EXACTLY the attitude that almost any content owner has towards intellectual property (I can take other people's stuff but they can't take mine).
Just have the rest of your team call you "The Napster".
Born to Play
Getting permission after the fact might be hard. They could say no. For future contracts, it is best to get it into the contract first.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
1. Find a bug in your own server-side code (easier than doing it on somebody else's unknown code, and that's usually doable.) :-)
2. Exploit the bug to put all your copyrights back in the source files (don't disrupt service or do other unethical deeds.)
3. Show the live code to your new employer, saying: "Here, they fixed it."
4. Bonus points if you install a rootkit to periodically re-patch the files
Perhaps they are just testing your temperment.. It's common for a new developer to start putting his name on stuff as he does changes or writes routines. Should have left yours in though.. But I would think that simply explaining you wrote it and the new name is a maintenance developer would be plausible. I would think your subject matter expertise and ability to sell yourself would make the most difference..
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
Go to archive.org, pull up some of the pages from 2 years ago and show the client.
If you have old copies time-stamped by the operating system that pre-date the versions of the usurper, then have your attorney threaten them with theft of copyright. They can put your name back as originating author, and themselves as enhancers/updaters, but failure to do so should be accompanied by legal sanction. FWIW, always have a good attorney as a personal friend. I do, and it has served me well in such cases. I do his tech support pro-bono. He does my legal work pro-bono as well. A good quid-pro-quo situation.
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
where you cannot loose your authorship rights.
What does taking credit for someone elses work and not paying a royalty for a copy of someone elses work have to do with themselves?
Me torrenting Game of Thrones is a very different thing from me getting a copy of Game of Thrones, and editing the credits so it is just one long list of my name over and over again. Then distributing that recredited work as my own.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYtMoDcwAoQ
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Why do you assume that because its on GitHub that its public? Many companies and individuals have private repos on GitHub.
Omeganon
Really depends on your contract.
This case is precisely why you need moral rights. The contract can determine who owns the copyright and/or licenses but the idea of "moral rights" is that the person who wrote the thing is always allowed to remain associated with the work. They may not own the copyright but they are always allowed to associate themselves with the work as its author...or the right to remain anonymous if they so choose. In addition these rights prevent anyone "mutilating" or damaging the work in the way that damages the author's reputation. While you can waive these rights in a contract you cannot reassign them.
If the US had such rights this would be an easy case to resolve: you contact the original company and demand that they leave you listed in the authorship credits. They may have the copyright but you would still have a right to be associated with the code. While they could have you waive this right in their original contract it is unlikely they would want to - if your name is associated with code there is a strong motivation to made it good code!
Revenu comes at the expense of resources (skill, time, materials, etc.). You should be fairly paid on the value of these resources (eg: the time you put in multiplied by your skill level). If your revenue stream involves you putting the resources up front for a result that can be duplicated at no cost, you're running a pretty insane gamble and your business model is invalid.
Credit is the one thing that allows you to gain some revenue from easily duplicated work. Be it simply because people like your work and are willing to compensate you for putting it up front or because they're willing to hire you to perform more work based on what they've seen so far.
Mind the frickin' laser...
Would you prefer that the guy have made some really shitty changes and left you name on it?
The company probably doesn't want the drama and may dump both of you, but at least let them know your side of the story by providing any proof you have.
Table-ized A.I.
A name is just a name. The code doesn't belong to either you nor the new developer (most cases). It belongs to the client. If they wanted to change the name or the new developer (agent owner) wanted to; it is completely fine and legal cause they own the work. If you wrote something and you owned it, it is your right to put your sons or wife's name on it.
Having said that, it has nothing to do with proving you wrote it in an interview. If someone said that you didn't write something, cause another persons name is on it. MOVE ON. Get your head out of your ethical ass and simply say they clearly did a lot of updates and the current version belongs to the new dev but you wrote the original. If the interviewee says you didn't create it, simply tell them you can answer any question about it's early development. Have them prove you didn't do it. If you are that uncomfortable about answering such questions, then don't have it on your résumé. Just your depth of detail in answering any questions will show people that you have intimate knowledge of the program. Let them come to their own conclusions about their developer. Don't be the dumb ass attacking their company by throwing out or implying accusations (however valid) in an interview.
Remember you DO NOT own the code, but that doesn't mean you can't take credit for your hard work. Two completely separate things.
Quite ironic.
Only to a simpleton. Slashdot isn't actually a hive mind.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
The Berne convention (which the USA is a signatory) explicit states the existence of moral rights:
"Independent of the author's economic rights, and even after the transfer of the said rights, the author shall have the right to claim authorship of the work and to object to any distortion, modification of, or other derogatory action in relation to the said work, which would be prejudicial to the author's honor or reputation"
This is not well known, because these rights cannot be licensed or sold in exchange of money, but that does not mean they do not exist.
In short, a programmer is, in an inalienable manner, the author of all the programs s/he wrote, whatever the contract or terms used to write them. Modifying the author name is a violation of these rights. Also, IANAL.
Well, what if creating the software required 10 people for 2 years? Once one copy has been shipped, do they charge $3,000,000 for that one copy? No, they charge a reasonable amount, based on the expectation that they will sell X copies. When someone decides that that software "wants to be free" (how do you figure what some bits want?) and steals it, the makers of the software are no longer being paid fairly based on value. Which is the same as when someone else takes credit for your work... you are no longer receiving value from that work, because you can't use it as a reference for future work.
Assuming it's work for hire...
If it was work for hire then the client owned the rights and original poster, samzenpus, had no right to put his own copyright into the header. The new developer/maintainer wouldn't have that right either.
If it wasn't a work for hire and samzenpus was the original author, then he has a case for copyright infringement. A cease and desist letter might get the headers restored.
I am a lawyer, but not yours. Anything I tell you might be a total lie intended to benefit my clients at your expense.
Publicly denounce the Dev as a thief.
- A Frog in a pond utters an azure cry. -
One collegue of mine consistently put MY name on HIS works. So obviously when something went south i got the feedback. Rather annoying
The part I don't get is that someone else (a person) put their name on the copyright line (according to the summary).
When doing work for a company, assuming the contract said all work created is theirs, then the company could put their name on it, but putting a different persons name on it seems pretty shady.
Personally, I'd have no problem defending the history of any piece of code I wrote. "Yeah, looks like they slapped someone elses name one it. All the more reason I'm glad I'm no longer working there. Ask me anything about it if you like... oh, and I have the revision history of it. If that's not enough for you to trust me, well.... " blah blah their paranoid and I don't want to work for someone quite that paranoid/untrusting. I'm glad I haven't had this problem yet, but I can't imagine it causing any issues with getting hired elsewhere.
Why the fuss? You wrote cosed source code and got payed for it. Not all precautions were taken to ensure the author was credited for his work. Someone screwed you over and it's hard -or tedious to say the least- to get the credit right.
If you want to avoid being screwed over again you could consider open source projects. You could also join a company the old fashioned way and make a career as the pretty good coding lad (or call yourself the strategic architect.) I've done both and I'm now in old fashioned employment. For me it sort of fits at this time. I'm having fun, getting credit and praise and I'm crediting and praising colleagues back.
The mentality to screw people over is what holds me back. I refuse to play tricks for other people's exhibitionistic financial gain. I only play along in a real meritocracy.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
In the thirds days of the week, not in the first nor in the second except for going straight to the third thoue shall take a mighty piece of stone, of even and ponderous shape so be it size ands weighthe, and ya shall take a long he Runge and by youre shoulders carry that stone , and not by Foote or by Camele or bye dragons but bye yer shioulders ya shall carry it to the front of her enemy and, by all the mightiest of launches ya shall crush the bloody bastard's skull unltylie his brainses squishes outta and his blodde and his gutse all come out of his nostrils and he shall snuff it.... AMEN
When was the last time you saw someone being prosecuted for putting their own credits at the tail end of a Hollywood movie? It simply doesn't happen.
Hollywood credits, down to the size of the type and placement in the sequence, is all defined in advance when drafting the contracts.
In this case, the coder failed to contract for rights to credit.
If this guy regularly replaces records of authorship with his name, he might not have an actual portfolio. If he's in his honeymoon stage with the company, they might fire him for misrepresenting himself during the hiring process.
Yeah, because when I download a movie, I replace all of the credits with my name and try to pass off to potential employers that I was wholly responsible for the film. Unless it's an Abrams film... he can keep those.
Abrams movies might be good if you are applying to a less than lethal weapons company. Getting blinded from that lens flare probably works better than getting tasered.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Others have correctly pointed out that you were most likely in a situation of work-for-hire and do not have a copyright claim to the work. However you may have a claim under Author's Rights (also referred to as Moral Rights). Author's Rights are separate and distinct from Copyright, and cannot be transferred. It doesn't grant you that much, but (amongst other things) it does grant you the right to be named as author (or co-author) in a work.
Your best course of action to to write the client a friendly letter or email (I'd lean towards letter in a situation like this), relay your situation to them, and inform them that you wish to be named as author (or co-author) in the work. Be clear you are not claiming any kind of copyright! You also may wish to point out that the other developer is incorrectly claiming copyright, when that belongs to the client. Just be careful of not making this an attack on the other developer. You just want some way of having your work recognised. If you do send a letter, be sure to get a notarized copy before you send it, in case you have to escalate things.
If you do need to take it further, then I'd suggest to just cut your losses and walk away. The other developer claiming your work as theirs is Libel: it has already harmed your reputation. It will be expensive, and chances are you wouldn't get enough to cover your expenses (not to mention the damage it would do to your reputation even if you are right).
users who say that you haven't taken anything from anyone when they copy bits, and then someone come along and copy bits they care about and the tune change.
And many don't, which you've acknowledged. So, how is this different from any number of other hypocrisies that human beings regularly commit in all areas of life? What you're describing has had entire books written on it that have nothing to do with tech or IP rights or law. What you're saying, essentially, is that Slashdot commentators are a fairly typical swath of human beings.
This is still a bad example, as it is an issue of credit for work done, not copying, as the person who did the work doesn't own it nor claim to have any right to it. It is a simple case of wanting credit for the work he or she did.
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
I don't know the role of the new developer. If the new developer is an employee and not a contractor, he may have been told to this when the company applied for copyright. Also we don't know if the new developer modified the code. There are many unknown questions here.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Bingo! Right answer! Zero technology, instantly understandable and accepted by even the most techno-illiterate among us. And essentially certain to prevail in court for just that reason. Suggestions to use the wayback machine or on-line source/version repositories are useless as evidence because they require that judges and juries (or even HR reps) understand what they represent.
Of course, all this technique will do is prove that you had access to the materials at the time they were mailed. Not that you own them or wrote them or invented them or whatever else may be your concern. BUT (and its a big and a good but) this will PROVE how the materials/project/invention looked at some time prior to the mailing date. So, if somebody who doesn't know you and was hired by the client some time after you mailed the package claims to be the author/inventer of the package contents, that claim will not pass any sort of scrutiny.
My wife used this very technique before she went to work as sales manager for a software vendor and took her extensive rolodex (aka contact list) with her after mailing a copy to herself. When she was moving on after an ugly commission dispute, that software vendor tried to claim that her contact list had been developed while she was in their employ and was therefore their property. They made dire legal threats about what would happen if she didn't give up her contact list or ever tried to use it again and had their attorney make threats of a lawsuit. Our attorney contacted their attorney, told him what my wife had mailed to herself prior to her employment, that the package was in a secure place, and would be produced as evidence if necessary. About two weeks later we got a letter from the other attorney suggesting that it all been a misunderstanding and then no further action would be taken.
you mean I cannot pay github or other hosting company to keep my files ? you mean a company that writes software for others cannot use the enterprise offering from github ?
Either they're dicks, or they're not.
Point out that you've received the new source code in interviews, with inaccurate notices about who wrote the code. Doesn't look good for you, doesn't look good for them. Suggest they make the notations accurate. Either they'll be dicks, or they won't.
If your former company is full of dicks, you've just got a problem. I'd still claim credit. Most companies won't have access to those files anyway. For those who do, and confront you with it, offer to explain the code, if you remember it well enough. "I wrote that, I remember it, I can tell you about it. They probably just weren't thinking when they rewrote the notice."
Don't get mad. Don't condemn the company. Honestly say what you did, and offer evidence to the effect. References who can vouch for the details of your work are ideal in this situation.
You don't want to show conflict with a former employer. Minimize the appearance of one, while claiming credit for what you did.
For projects you claim on your resume, get a letter of recommendation from the company you did the work for or use that company as a reference. They will be able to say "yes, he did work on that."
... but don't let it slide.
In the past, I've given up code foregoing credits in the interest of improving a product or (extremely naively) hoping to get someone to cooperate with me on a project. It seemed trivial because either it was as a part of a fairly active community or it was an aside to, what seemed then, a bigger project I was working on.
And eventually it became something of a habbit: look, what you did is broken, here's the code that'll fix it, what will it take to get you to apply it? Losing credit? Fine, make the software better.
Start by bringing it up with the individual. There's always the possibility that there's a misunderstanding. In my case, "thttpd". I was working at Demon Internet and tasked with fixing problems with thttpd so we'd be able to run a massive virtual web service off it, giving all of our dialup customers their own personal website. thttpd had some horrible issues like using a blocking "gets" to retrieve the query after a connection. I fixed all of that up and added a bandwidth throttling system. We got it working, and I let a colleague roll up all of our changes and submit them back. Silence. And then thttpd 2.0 is announced. The changes looked *suspiciously* like everything I'd done, just reformatted.
But I'm not willing to say "he stole my shit" - because it was different in just enough places that I couldn't be sure, and the reality is it was long enough since his last release that he could have worked on solving the same issues - they *were* the big issues, and my code was deliberately written to try and fit in with his code base, so perhaps I just did a really good job of making my code look like his.
-- A change is as good as a reboot.
Not quite, I think. Even after a program gets free, honest people still tend to pay for their copy especially if support may be involved. Further, studies show that a large percentage of downloaders will pay for something after they copy it, for a variety of reasons. Finally, related to first, a free copy does not imply an unsold copy (except unto the deluded); some will always copy, some will copy and buy, some will buy first.
Credit for one's work is a whole 'nuther thing. Copying is separate from plagiarism, as others have pointed out. I haven't the right words - but it is a heinous thing to claim another's work as your own.
You should search for the js scripts on Wayback Machine, in old archived versions of those websites using your js code.
That should be good enough proof.
"you mean a company that writes software for others cannot use the enterprise offering from github ?"
It depends on contract, as you surely know.
"If it was work for hire then the client owned the rights and original poster, samzenpus, had no right to put his own copyright into the header."
Which is, very possibly the case here. Taking my crystal ball out of its retirement, that's my view: ...but it happens that the code is javascript publicly accesable from the former company's web site and the new company downloads and sees that the copyright notice doesn't match.
1) The original poster is hired to develop some code for a third party.
2) The original poster finds cool to stamp his copyright in said code -after all, nobody reads the sources, out of ignorance of the implications.
3) Another guy gets hired to work on the same code base, finds the copyright notice and for those files he modifies, he alters the note -hey! now it's my code, isn't it?
4) The former guy presents his code for a new hire
5)
6) but, but, but... it's mine! I know, I'll ask Slashdot to learn what can I do.
YOUR files, yes. Someone else's files? Not without their consent.
... do I have fair-use rights to use your house for educational purposes?
If you're the architect that designed my house you do have the right to include the plans in your portfolio, even if I purchased the copyright to those plans. If you're the builder, you can include pictures of various build stages in yours. Ditto for the plumber, electrician, carpenter, framer, cabinet maker and anyone else who helped construct the house.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
While it won't help with your current situation, digital time stamping from a trusted third party can be used to certify your authorship.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping
If they're a "client" and not an "employer", then you own the code unless you contractually specified that this was a "work for hire" arrangement. IANAL but you might want to contact the client and clear things up with them.
Do you have ESP?
Some people have.
Often they later cancel their ISP, burn their modem or router, and then throw their computer off a cliff.
Of course if their therapist later coaxes them onto the internet at some point, they make sure that whatever they download isn't something infected by the sheep weevil.
Basically he's like the architect and builder of a beautiful building, and was bragging about it to a prospective employer, to suddenly find out some asshat that got hired to do maintenance after he left changed the dedication plaque and blueprints to have his name instead.
There's a big difference between watching TV shows for free, and fraudulently claiming someone else's work as your own.
What it comes down to for me is either you respect the rights of the creator of a work, or you don't. If you respect those rights, then you don't pass the work off as your own, but you also don't take that work & use it w/o permission. The two go hand in hand.
Just contact your old client and ask if they'll write up a letter for you, affirming that you wrote the code for them, for you to use for job search purposes only. There's no reason to assume there was any particular malice in them putting their company headers on the code, so there's no reason to go down an adversarial path immediately. You've got nothing to lose by just asking them politely to acknowledge you as the author of the code for this specific scenario, and doing so establishes that you're acting in good faith, so why not do it?
It's why intellectual property is, in fact, property.
If it actually was like normal property, we wouldn't need copyright law or any other such thing.
Your notion of "material goods" being distinct is actually what fails. Property is a legal concept, not a physical good.
Property is a legal concept, but copyrights and patents are not anything like real property; they're basically just government-enforced monopolies over ideas and methods. That's not even close to real property.
There are decades of case law on fair use. In a field where clearly satisfying even two criteria has been enough to establish fair use, OP's suggested use nails every criterion. it's a work only valuable as part of an ongoing enterprise, not being put to anything remotely similar to that use, depriving no one of any legal valuable interest, using only enough of it to establish actual authorship, in private, to someone with no interest at all in the work itself, who furthermore does not retain a copy. I doubt it's possible to even imagine stronger case.
The notion that copyright is some sort of "property" was only recently insinuated into the public consciousness, when the rent-seekers finally managed to snooker a body new enough and naive enough not to reject it as centuries of actual governments have done, viz. the United Nations. That success has been leveraged shamelessly.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
What it comes down to for me is either you respect the rights of the creator of a work, or you don't.
I know I don't respect such 'rights,' but are they truly rights? I know that copyright lasts virtually forever, but I don't think rights fade with time, so copyright is more of a privilege given to certain people to encourage innovation. These 'rights' do not exists so these people can have a working business model, but they exist for the people.
Some countries have moral rights beyond the Berne convention. For instance in France the author has an attribution right that cannot be waived away: it is "perpetual, inalienable, and imprescriptible". I understand the situation in other european countries is similar, but not in the US. Perhaps there is an opportunity to send a open letter to your representant here? It may lead nowhere, but there is nothing to loose.
As far as I can tell, one major difference between (what I mean by) "credit" and "copyright" is that copyright can be bought or otherwise transacted for money. For example, after you create a work (let's say a book), you can sell the copyright so that someone else (say the publisher) holds the right to receive remuneration for reproducing the work. But that does not take away your ability to say, "You know, I'm the one who did that." See also the comment from the sibling poster amaurea.
If by "credit" you mean "remuneration", then I would agree with your statement that "Copyright is how you secure credit for something you created". But that's not what I'm talking about, nor the OP. Of course there may be circumstances where, due to other contractual obligations, you are not allowed to take credit (undercover ops, ghost writing, etc.), but that's not related to the current situation.
If by "DENSE" you mean "solid; robustly built; able to withstand attacks" then I thank you for the compliment.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
it's not a copyright. a copyright is when you distribute something and there are copyright restrictions, subject to things like caveats about fair use. THE COMPANY ISN"T DISTRIBUTING THIS SOFTWARE!!! so there are no caveats applied to it. the company owns the software, and they're doing what they want with it. to be precise - the software that the submittor wrote is not available. there is website software on the web that can be peeped, but this is the erroneous problem in the first place!!!!
wtf rights? it's all contractual, whatever the contract says goes. similarly, if this guy signed a contract saying he couldn't shop the code around, then case closed next topic.
The submitter probably doesn't have access to their version control.
He doesn't need it if The Wayback Machine has an older copy of the page, and if they kept a copy of his code along with it. If this is true, he can estimate the date it changed, and point prospective clients to that - let 'em argue against a third party website archive at that point.
Hell, I think if I wrote website code, I'd make it a point to request that archive.org uploaded a copy of the thing into their archive the moment I released the code to production.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Eventually the perpetrator will do it again to somebody else's work.
If it was me I'd have a quiet and calm word with the former manager from the time the code was written and try to avoid any public fuss since that can backfire.
This is not a pleasant situation, I wish I had good advice for you.
What I want to comment on are the assumptions made in many of these posts regarding US laws on copyright and ownership.
It is unclear from the OP what country you are in and whether you were an employee or an independent contractor; from your use of the term client my assumption is the latter, but I cannot know for sure. If you were in the US and an employee then ownership and copyright will invariably reside with the 'client', however, if you were an independent contractor in the US the situation is very different, can be complex and State laws can complicate it further. I would encourage you to read at least one of these articles 1 2 3 each of which give a good overview of the situation.
Basically, unless it is clearly stated in a contract that the 'client' will own the copyright it is unlikely that anyone other than you, the independent contractor, is the copyright owner. Simply stating that it is a work-for-hire is normally not enough in the case of software, the copyright must be explicitly transferred to the client, or it will often be yours by default. This is because, in general, a computer program falls under the copyright category of literary work, a category not included in the nine categories of work-for-hire defined by Section 101 of the US copyright laws. As always, there are exceptions, but my experience (and legal advice I have been given), indicate that they are not the norm.
Note: IANAL, but I am an independent contractor and have dealt with copyright issues and lawyers several times.
Don't put down to malice what can be put down to incompetence.
Company was probably concerned about their copyright, so they batch edited all their files. There was no intent to defraud.
so you cannot keep those files on computers hosted in a datacenter owned by somebody else, which is exactly what the enterprise offer from github ?
we're not talking a copyright of a book, we're talking...
copyright of a...
(I'll let you finish. Go ahead, shill-boy, we're waiting.)
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I used to contribute to JBoss until I had this happen to me.
I wrote the very first JAAS tutorial and example code for JBoss. It was promptly stolen, the other guy's name added, mine removed and then published to the JBoss community.
I called the plagiarist, Scott Stark, out, he denied it.
I pointed out all "his" code was identical to mine including variable names, he denied it, claiming the variable names were "obvious".
I pointed out this "his" examples contained exactly the same errors as mine did, finally he admitted he'd stolen my work and added my name as a contributor.
That plus Mark Fleury's attitude drove me away and I decided never to contribute to JBoss again.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
The two cases are closer than you think. The poster is complaining about credit for the code because it directly impacts his ability to generate income.
Lets examine the poster's case. His ability to find new work and generate income is lessened because taking his credit affects his cv, his reputation.
Similarly, when "information" such as software is copied without permission, it deducts from the revenue of the creator.
Poster has already said the software belongs to his client, not him. Copying his software would affect his income, how?
In each case, the creator is losing income.
Anything at all could fall under such a broad analogy. If you buy a bad app from iTunes, and complain about it on forums, etc you are affecting that creator's income. That's a false equivalence.
It is much more valuable (and more common at least in the UK) to include references. Simple letters from your past clients/employees covering what you did for them and how happy they were.
Without some ideal of the the goals, budget, time-scales, support, and in IT critically when the work was completed it is impossible to judge its quality.
Even then: there is a difference between "ownership" or "intellectual property" (what many here dismiss) and getting credit where it is due (this case).
No, actually, getting credit is exactly what ownership and copyright is about. You get to get credit for it because you made it and own it, copyright is the law saying that someone else can't take it and take the credit (amongst other things). This is exactly what most people around here seem not to understand.
I cannot remember anyone claiming that artist should not be credited. There have been arguments that you should be allowed to copy their stuff for free, but I've never ever seen anyone claiming that you should be allowed to claim you had written that stuff if you haven't.
Then why are they calling for the abolition of copyright and IP? They should be calling for the use of BSD like copyright licenses instead. Copyright law is exactly what stops someone copying your work and taking the credit, if you want to say "take this, but cite me" then the BSD is what you're after.
Not quite, I think. Even after a program gets free, honest people still tend to pay for their copy especially if support may be involved.
Right Which is exactly what the parent said – it's dishonest to steal that work ;). That's fundamentally what's being argued here. Don't take things without paying for them (unless given a license that allows you to do so). It's dishonest, and directly impacts someone else's income.
Not if you're in on any of my contracts no, you can't. And don't even think about uttering the word "cloud" while talking about your development model. Some clients, most (small time?) clients, will be ok with you putting the code in a private repository. More specifically, they won't care where you put your code, bigger clients want to know exactly where everything is.
Me failed English...
FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
Before signing contract open source your private code library/snippets which you intend to use under BSD license and put into well known repository like Github or sourceforge. BSD license just to calm down your employer/client, that all modifications will remain their sole property, and what they get is some debugged and cleaned code for free, without strings attached. After that whenever question of authorship arise you can point on the traces of BSD code and date of submission into repository, and also demand from employer/client to add BSD copyright note with your name to their code.
Ownership and copyright may be about getting credit, but getting credit is not always about ownership and copyright - some times it's just about getting credit. Unfortunately, people are sometimes driven to using ownership and copyright to maintain proper attribution.
No. Getting credit for you work falls under the legal umbrella of moral rights, which is related to, yet separate from copyright, which is about getting paid for your work.
Moral rights [...] include the right of attribution, the right to have a work published anonymously or pseudonymously, and the right to the integrity of the work. [...] Moral rights are distinct from any economic rights tied to copyrights. Even if an artist has assigned his or her copyright rights to a work to a third party, he or she still maintains the moral rights to the work.
This is probably common. I have had a similar thing happen - I wrote a system for a major bank in Java/JSP, and they ran it for a bit. Then they copied it (line for line, I saw the code) into C#/ASP and did some minor updates. They then claimed it as their own, and stopped paying the support fee.
Given they were the biggest customer of the company I worked for, there was nothing to be done. Oh joy.
I share your pain.
"Cats like plain crisps"
Could you use the wayback machine to show that the original version of the site was in fact written by you? You could even diff new files against old ones to show that the new author simply stole credit for your work. It seems odd to pull you in for an interview only to spring that on you - most companies would not let you in the door. On a further note - could the site have been through a major rewrite? Maybe the code in question is not actually yours.
Kindly inform the client that the developer who is maintaining the code is plagiarizing the code you created for them by putting his name as the author of the code. Normally, in the header of the code there would be a section stating the client owns the copyright to the code, a section stating the name of the person who originally created the code (who in this case is samzenpus), and the name of anyone who edits the code for new development or maintenance purposes along with the dates and areas/lines the person edited. Since the individual whom is maintaining the code has change the author line to their own name, the individual is plagiarizing the code the original developer created (samzenpus). Because the developer who is maintaining the code is in violation of plagiarism, samzenpus has grounds to file a lawsuit against either the client or the maintenance developer (a lawyer should be able to clearly tell you whom a lawsuit can be filed against). If I were in samzenpus' position, I would inform the the client or the maintenance developer (whomever your lawyer says you have grounds to sue) that the maintenance developer is in violation of plagiarism and that the code creation/authorship must be restored to samzenpus or he will have no other course of action but to file a lawsuit. There is an article on legalzoom.com about plagiarism that should be helpful (http://www.legalzoom.com/intellectual-pro perty-rights/copyrights/plagiarism-what-is-it-exactly).
Revenu comes at the expense of resources (skill, time, materials, etc.). You should be fairly paid on the value of these resources (eg: the time you put in multiplied by your skill level). If your revenue stream involves you putting the resources up front for a result that can be duplicated at no cost, you're running a pretty insane gamble and your business model is invalid.
Then you are saying that writing a novel, making a movie, recording an album and producing computer software are all insane gambles based on invalid business models.
You are basically saying that no-one in their right mind would write software professionally. That's what you're saying. You're saying that Microsoft and Apple, Lotus, Autodesk, Adobe and Quark are/were all crazy. You're saying that these and many oth companies, whose software has streamlined productivity for millions worldwide, revolutionising the workplace and improving practically every field of human endeavour, are working on a failed business model.
Don't you want these things? Don't you want future developments of a similar quality? (Even if some make buggier software than others!)
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Have to agree with the parent suggesting version control.
If you are able to recall your timestamped version with your name in the code from the interview room on any web connected device, you're golden...
But still, it doesnt change the fact that the person maintaining your work is fraudulently claiming cedit for creation rather than adding their name into a list of maintainers and what their changes were like a normal change log. Not sure what you can do about that to be honest...
ok, maybe not... but I must admit that in the past I have been tempted by the idea of introducing that developer's legs to a 10 kilo sledgehammer...
Contacting the old client ahead of time, asking them for a reference which specifically mentions your work on that project (and ideally which mentions you as the author, with the new guy as maintainer).
Explain to the new client that the developer claiming the code was taken on to perform maintenance of the project after you left.
so you cannot keep those files on computers hosted in a datacenter owned by somebody else, which is exactly what the enterprise offer from github ?
Again, it depends on WHO owns the code and what they say you can and can't do with it. This cavalier attitude regarding other peoples property that seems so common here is disturbing.
Actually they don't own it, and admit they don't own it. They are not demanding money and are not restricting the work in any way. All that they want is to be able to say is: "I made this".
copyright is the law saying that someone else can't take it and take the credit
That's really not what copyright is at all. "Taking credit" for something not your own would probably be more covered under fraud laws. Copyright mostly concerns copying.
Misattribution is fraud.
They should be minimizing their javascript anyway. Tell that new credit-stealing dev how to use a minimizer. Then, he can feel all fancy when he brags about how his awesome stolen code loads more efficiently. He can also feel important because the obfuscation will make it harder to reuse, making it harder for other devs to take the credit for his awesome stolen code!
Depends on whether the site was ever public, as opposed to being an in-house app (e.g. on an intranet). But I do like this idea.
Hire Tony, kneecap the guy. Seriously, sue, sue, sue.
Keep copies of the contracts and statements of work to show what you were contracted to do. Contact the client (not the developer currently maintaining the code, but that developer's manager or whomever at the client signed the contract) and ask them for a letter to clarify that you did the original work for them, regardless of the copyright notices in the code now.
Be polite about it, and most clients will be happy to help.
Insanity is a gradual process; don't rush it.
Add some code that that looks like it is necessary, but is just you name hashed. Give the key to future employers and that can decrypt and see it was you.
From my impression, those who want to completely remove copyright are in the minority these days ("IP" is a term which covers very diverse things, and therefore should best be avoided completely). And I guess many of those either never have written anything themselves, or don't recognize that copyright, despite its name, covers more than the right to copy.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
You're still the author right, because who authored it is a matter of fact and not a legal technicality. Say you're the author. Invite the interviewer to discuss details about it with you. Don't let someone steal your best work. I had someone do the same thing, except I in my case i'ts immaterial to my life really could give a shit and the guy in question was basically fucking nuts anyways.,
IAAL but TINLA, but you should see an intellectual property lawyer and ask for their advice on the following matters. These things do vary by jurisdiction, although some of it is based on the TRIPS treaty (required for WTO membership), so it is getting to be less different between the jurisdictions. Firstly, if you did this as a contractor, you quite likely still own the copyright, unless you signed an agreement saying you don't. In that case he client has a licence, the scope of which may vary, but not so far as to allow them to apply their own copyright claim to the exclusion of you. Secondly, what they have done is quite likely a breach of your moral right of attribution, especially if you were a contractor rather than an employee. There may well be scope for a nice scary letter from a lawyer to get them to behave.
do I have fair-use rights to use your house for educational purposes?
Actually, I have several friends who've had houses built, and the builders occasionally bring prospective clients around to look at the houses. They say they've always invited the people in (when they've been home), and let the builder give them a tour of the house.
Maybe the builders don't have a legal right to do this uninvited, at least not inside your property line. But if the builder is open and friendly about it, and it doesn't happen too often, most people are reasonable and will cooperate. Some companies would even cooperate with such "guided tours".
My house was built before I was born, so this doesn't really apply to me. But we've had a few visits by previous owners (one the daughter of the first owners from 60 years ago), and we've been happy to show them what has become of their house and yard over the years. We also had a small addition put on, and the builders once brought some people by to look at it, which we cooperated with. (They liked the shelving and cabinets I'd added to the room. ;-)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Because we don't need real estate law or admiralty law or antiquities law or commercial law?
That just shows that there are differences, but they are all still physical property.
That's exactly what real property is: a government-enforced monopoly on the idea of exclusive control of land.
You're an imbecile if you can't see the difference between a monopoly on certain data that may well be stored on someone else's physical equipment and imaginary property. Nice try, though. I'll assume you're truly a complete imbecile if you make any further objections.
Sec. 101 b 1 says work for hire includes: "as a contribution to a collective work" ...so it's possible the new developer falls under that as well... (if not the original coder)
The code is already visible somewhere, since TFA mentions that potential clients have seen it with the usurper's name on it and therefore accused the actual author of cribbing it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Put your crystal ball back where it came from. OP never claimed copyright, nor did he mention putting that in the code. What was removed was the comments naming him as the author. The new developer claimed copyright.
Author and copyright owner are not the same thing.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If it was an in-house app how the hell are prospective clients able to see the code with the new author's name in it, causing them to accuse the original author of copying it?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"Author and copyright owner are not the same thing."
Maybe not in bastardized legal systems. In other, more sane countries, authorship is the default copyright notice.
Nevertheless -the finger, the moon, and that story, change "copyright" for "authorship" if you want to (after all, we don't know the exact notice added to the sources, do we?) and review it again; you will see nothing of relevance has been changed.
Author, not owner. The company is the owner.
In any case, if you're using it as an example of your work that word - exclusive - is rather important. The whole point is that it's yours and not someone else's.
Finally, while it doesn't stop him saying anything it's making people not believe him when he says it. In practice those amount to the same thing. Heard of Cassandra?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If someone else owns the copyright, you simply shouldn't have copies of the code around at all, for any purpose. I think as a potential employer, the fact that you took their code, made a copy, and are now shopping it around to new employers is a red flag, whether the copyright notice on it is intact or not. The fact that this may be JavaScript code that's served by some public server doesn't change that.
Physical property and intellectual property are not the same. They aren't covered by the same rules. A computer program, or website is covered by copyright law whether distributed or not. My house is not.
Computer software whether distributed or not falls under copyright law. Period.
Misattribution is fraud.
masturbation is friend
If there is a need for the added productivity afforded by such software, people with that need will pay to have that software made (or improved to meet the specifics of their needs).
Apache was made despite the fact that people weren't forced by arbitrary government rules to pay for their copy. Companies paid developers to improve on it because they needed those improvements. They invested time and effort in making the software better because it benefits them. I'm not even arguing that they be forced to contribute their changes either (though I like the open-source model and it can exist *specifically* because there is protection for credit, not from copying). They may decide to pay programmers internally to build better software that benefits only themselves. That's a bigger investment though and a larger gamble as it relies on secrecy but it may be a valid business decision. In such a case, you try to protect it with NDA or some such, not copyright.
Regarding novels, movies and albums, I'm saying that your business model should focus on being paid to do work if that is the reason you are performing that work for. A band should be paid to climb up on a stage and give a good show. Not sit on their ass while government enforces the fact that they played that show once and should get money every time someone listens to a recording of it. Writing more songs is an investment, it means that people who liked your first show might be keen to pay again to watch you perform to those new songs you worked came up with.
But regardless of the business model, performing art is first and foremost a way to express yourself, do it because you enjoy it, not to make money. If people like what you do, you'll make money and that's a great bonus. It may afford you more time to put on your art. If you're quite good, you may even make a living out of it. What I'm saying is that you aren't *entitled* to the bonus. You're entitled to the credit.
Of course we have great works that may (likely) have never existed were it not for copyrights. Exploiting a bad law to reach great results does not justify that result. The fact that Nike shoes are great does not justify them using child labour (which is/was legal where they do/did it). I'd give up on Hollywood's ability to make Transformers 6 for the sake of proper copyright law, wouldn't you? ;)
Mind the frickin' laser...