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Sued Freelancer Allegedly Turns Over Contractee Source Code In Settlement
FriendlySolipsist writes: Blizzard Entertainment has been fighting World of Warcraft bots for years. TorrentFreak reports that Bossland, a German company that operates "buddy" bots, alleges Blizzard sued one of its freelancers and forced a settlement. As part of that settlement, the freelancer allegedly turned over Bossland's source code to Blizzard. In Bossland's view, their code was "stolen" by Blizzard because it was not the freelancer's to disclose. This is a dangerous precedent for freelance developers in the face of legal threats: damned if you do, damned if you don't.
This is a dangerous precedent for freelance developers in the face of legal threats: damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Well, not quite. I'm a freelancer. Would I work for a client that is a bad citizen in their particular niche? No, I don't think so.
I'm not a gamer, but if I understand correctly these bots give you an unfair advantage and are forbidden by Blizzard. Yeah well, don't look surprised if the shit hits the fan at some point.
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I have about this -->||<-- much sympathy for Bossland.
The code in question allowed users to violate a very reasonable clause in Blizzard's TOS: Don't cheat or use 'bots.
I hope that now Blizz can analyze the code and go after the users of said 'bots, which I'm sure is their intention behind getting the code.
Hopefully they'll go after the freelancers behind the other game's bots.
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
most likely they took it as a way to implement security against the same sort of code in the future. it would be like the government forcing someone to give up their malware code as a part of a plea deal and then using it to create more security. i dont see anything wrong with this as long as they arent using the source code to do its intended purpose.