Is the person who posted the code the owner?
If not, did he have permission to give it away?
If so, did he mean to allow it to be used by anyone, anywhere?
Is there a license, somewhere out there, attached to this?
Who knows. I'd start by trying to contact the person who posted the code, ask him these questions, and a few more. Let him know what the situation is. If there's a problem, then he knows the situation and can take action. Contact him anonymously and if there is a problem then he can take appropriate action and you didn't do anything anyone knows about. That covers the legal aspects and keeps your job intact. If there isn't a problem, then nothing changes.
If you can't contact him then the situation gets more complicated. My suggestion is to read between the lines. A lot of people will post code to help someone out if they publicly request it on a forum, I've done that and I don't care if MS or Google want to use my lowly little code snippits, and in a major piece of software, 200 lines would be lowly. If it looks like someone threw up some code that they don't care about, then I'd say run with it. That's skirting the legal edge a bit (maybe more). I'd say it's legal to use if there's no copyright, author information, header, etc. in the comments or the post, but I'm no copyright attorney, and even if not, this may not be the most moral thing to do.
One option you might want to run with is taking it to the lead developer. I know he's the "bad guy" in this case, but he's also the only other person in the company you can talk to about it without reveling that the code is stolen. He should know that if the new guy can google a few lines or whatever and find the code that anyone else could too. Together you may be able to re-write it as you said you could, and with him as the lead dev. you wouldn't have to find excuses for making huge last minute changes.
All in all, not a position I'd want to be in, goodluck to you.
I for one will not chastise a company that pushes a release date back, even this far, in order to make a quality product. I've played far too many games that are bugged, crash, some won't even install correctly. I've played several that are easier to pirate because piracy removed a lot of the problems I was having (I still own a copy however). I've said it before and I'll say it again. If the product is worth it (as half-life 2 certainly is), I'm willing to wait the time it takes to make it perfect.
Do I wish that they could release every 6 months? of course. Do I want them to rush it out the door in 6 months the way a lot of companies would do? No, that would kill the game, and I hope most people here realize it. Failing them meeting the 6 month date, do I wish they could have given me an accurate time line to begin with? again, of course, but as someone who dabbles in code and computers myself, I know the unexpected pops up.
Way to go Valve for making one of the few games I've enjoyed enough to play through to the end, and leaving me still wanting more.
Putting aside the misleading title, and the lack of understanding of why people wait for hours in line at midnight to get the first copy (I picked mine up like a normal human the day after at best buy, I'm a fan, not psychotic). That's just awsome. Very realistic looking, blending in and looking like was part of the statue. That had to take a lot of effort and coordination. Nicely done!
Yes, I'm using Vista Ultimate OEM on my desktop and Home Premium bundled on my laptop. Yes I also have a copy of XP I could put on both, and I choose not to. I actually enjoy Vista. A lot of the hatred for Vista comes not from horrible issues with it, but simply because it's different and people don't want to change. They know how the system works, how to use it, and they don't want to bother learning something different. Both my dad, and many system admins fall to this, it's not something unique to a certain class of users. I use it for 2 reasons. 1) At worse it's on par with XP, certainly not worse than it. It has bugs, but also some nice new features. 2) In a few years EVERYTHING will run on Vista. I know XP already, and in a tech support job, I'm preparing for the future, learning what users will have trouble with and how to fix and tweek the OS. I'm currently ahead of every person I know in real life, though I'm certainly not what I would call an expert on it, nor anywhere near being certified.
There are people though that have used both, and continue to support XP because they have honest issues with Vista. I encourage everyone to try both and use the one that works for you. In a parting "make love not war" message. I don't care if you use XP, so why does everyone seem to have Vista so much? Sure, it may not be right for you, but it's right for me, yet all the Vista haters seem to take this personal...?
P.S. Seems from other posts this is just a hoax anyway, so everyone who immediately started bashing "M$" for this can start looking up facts. As my comments above stated, I wouldn't care if it was true, and I care just as much now that it's been outed as a hoax.
On to the reason for my post. I've seen a lot of people talking about how their free linux doesn't try to control their system, activate it, etc. I've heard pretty much the same arguments for OSX. For those of you who are using this argument, you might want to take a look at this. http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/15/1933254 The basis of the article is that Windows IS free, and while it -should- require activation, and off the shelf copy's do, we all know we could easily find ones that don't.
Last note, sorry for the eye straining block of ASCII that was my first post, forgot to stick in the html...
After skimming over the posts (no, I'm not reading every ~300 of them), all I see is bitching. How MS controls your software! Games have been doing this for years, reducing or eliminating functionality if your found to have a cracked version. Someone correct me if I get the wrong titles, but in Godfather, if you have a cracked copy, once you get into a car you can't get back out, sure, you could play through the game like this, but who would? It essentially makes it a trial. Operation Flashpoint, after about an hour of play your rifles accuracy would slowly degrade until there was no way in hell you could hit anything. Again, they turned a pirated copy into a trail. Nobody has ever said anything about this.
MS is doing about the same thing from what I see of the situation, 1 hour trial, then, blam, no more pirated copy. I'm sure accidents will happen, but the first one where a major business gets shut down by accident will cost them a healthy lawsuit, I'm willing to believe MS will go farther to prevent this than most people believe. Until I see headlines where massive amounts of legit costumers get cut off, I'm going to sit back and compliment MS for catching pirater's a bit off guard, and follow with interest how crackers will get around this "feature".
I will never admit to owning an illegal copy of Windows, however, if I did and this happened, guess what, I earned it for not buying a legal copy or using Linux. I'm not going to start yelling "M$ pwnz my box and it's not fair!". I hate people that use M$, it simply shows how unintelligent, uncreative, and childish the person behind the keyboard is. I hate MS for a lot of reasons (and love them for just as many), but I can also respect their business practices. Note before you flame that I didn't say I admired them as ethical, honest, or fair, simply that I respect them. You got caught pirating, your computer no longer works, sucks for you.
BTW, I run Windows Ultimate OEM, which I paid for, and I'm not sorry I did. No, it isn't something your dad that surfs e-mail should run out and get. No, a large corporate entity shouldn't run out and upgrade every machine. Yes, it has it's bugs (which are both frustrating, but, in a perverse way, fun to fish out and fix for me), but none I haven't been able to correct, I expect bugs in software with as many lines of code as Vista has.
For me and my purposes, I'm glad I got Vista.
With my rant over, I await childish flames from users who hate "M$", and look forward to legitimate discussions from those of you who, regardless of operating system preference, are able to take a relatively unbiased view of the situation, and present intelligent arguments.
-BeanBagKing
Slashdot Mirror
sooo many questions.
Is the person who posted the code the owner?
If not, did he have permission to give it away?
If so, did he mean to allow it to be used by anyone, anywhere?
Is there a license, somewhere out there, attached to this?
Who knows. I'd start by trying to contact the person who posted the code, ask him these questions, and a few more. Let him know what the situation is. If there's a problem, then he knows the situation and can take action. Contact him anonymously and if there is a problem then he can take appropriate action and you didn't do anything anyone knows about. That covers the legal aspects and keeps your job intact. If there isn't a problem, then nothing changes.
If you can't contact him then the situation gets more complicated. My suggestion is to read between the lines. A lot of people will post code to help someone out if they publicly request it on a forum, I've done that and I don't care if MS or Google want to use my lowly little code snippits, and in a major piece of software, 200 lines would be lowly. If it looks like someone threw up some code that they don't care about, then I'd say run with it. That's skirting the legal edge a bit (maybe more). I'd say it's legal to use if there's no copyright, author information, header, etc. in the comments or the post, but I'm no copyright attorney, and even if not, this may not be the most moral thing to do.
One option you might want to run with is taking it to the lead developer. I know he's the "bad guy" in this case, but he's also the only other person in the company you can talk to about it without reveling that the code is stolen. He should know that if the new guy can google a few lines or whatever and find the code that anyone else could too. Together you may be able to re-write it as you said you could, and with him as the lead dev. you wouldn't have to find excuses for making huge last minute changes.
All in all, not a position I'd want to be in, goodluck to you.
I for one will not chastise a company that pushes a release date back, even this far, in order to make a quality product. I've played far too many games that are bugged, crash, some won't even install correctly. I've played several that are easier to pirate because piracy removed a lot of the problems I was having (I still own a copy however). I've said it before and I'll say it again. If the product is worth it (as half-life 2 certainly is), I'm willing to wait the time it takes to make it perfect. Do I wish that they could release every 6 months? of course. Do I want them to rush it out the door in 6 months the way a lot of companies would do? No, that would kill the game, and I hope most people here realize it. Failing them meeting the 6 month date, do I wish they could have given me an accurate time line to begin with? again, of course, but as someone who dabbles in code and computers myself, I know the unexpected pops up. Way to go Valve for making one of the few games I've enjoyed enough to play through to the end, and leaving me still wanting more.
Putting aside the misleading title, and the lack of understanding of why people wait for hours in line at midnight to get the first copy (I picked mine up like a normal human the day after at best buy, I'm a fan, not psychotic). That's just awsome. Very realistic looking, blending in and looking like was part of the statue. That had to take a lot of effort and coordination. Nicely done!
There are people though that have used both, and continue to support XP because they have honest issues with Vista. I encourage everyone to try both and use the one that works for you. In a parting "make love not war" message. I don't care if you use XP, so why does everyone seem to have Vista so much? Sure, it may not be right for you, but it's right for me, yet all the Vista haters seem to take this personal...?
On to the reason for my post. I've seen a lot of people talking about how their free linux doesn't try to control their system, activate it, etc. I've heard pretty much the same arguments for OSX. For those of you who are using this argument, you might want to take a look at this. http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/15/1933254 The basis of the article is that Windows IS free, and while it -should- require activation, and off the shelf copy's do, we all know we could easily find ones that don't.
Last note, sorry for the eye straining block of ASCII that was my first post, forgot to stick in the html...
After skimming over the posts (no, I'm not reading every ~300 of them), all I see is bitching. How MS controls your software! Games have been doing this for years, reducing or eliminating functionality if your found to have a cracked version. Someone correct me if I get the wrong titles, but in Godfather, if you have a cracked copy, once you get into a car you can't get back out, sure, you could play through the game like this, but who would? It essentially makes it a trial. Operation Flashpoint, after about an hour of play your rifles accuracy would slowly degrade until there was no way in hell you could hit anything. Again, they turned a pirated copy into a trail. Nobody has ever said anything about this. MS is doing about the same thing from what I see of the situation, 1 hour trial, then, blam, no more pirated copy. I'm sure accidents will happen, but the first one where a major business gets shut down by accident will cost them a healthy lawsuit, I'm willing to believe MS will go farther to prevent this than most people believe. Until I see headlines where massive amounts of legit costumers get cut off, I'm going to sit back and compliment MS for catching pirater's a bit off guard, and follow with interest how crackers will get around this "feature". I will never admit to owning an illegal copy of Windows, however, if I did and this happened, guess what, I earned it for not buying a legal copy or using Linux. I'm not going to start yelling "M$ pwnz my box and it's not fair!". I hate people that use M$, it simply shows how unintelligent, uncreative, and childish the person behind the keyboard is. I hate MS for a lot of reasons (and love them for just as many), but I can also respect their business practices. Note before you flame that I didn't say I admired them as ethical, honest, or fair, simply that I respect them. You got caught pirating, your computer no longer works, sucks for you. BTW, I run Windows Ultimate OEM, which I paid for, and I'm not sorry I did. No, it isn't something your dad that surfs e-mail should run out and get. No, a large corporate entity shouldn't run out and upgrade every machine. Yes, it has it's bugs (which are both frustrating, but, in a perverse way, fun to fish out and fix for me), but none I haven't been able to correct, I expect bugs in software with as many lines of code as Vista has. For me and my purposes, I'm glad I got Vista. With my rant over, I await childish flames from users who hate "M$", and look forward to legitimate discussions from those of you who, regardless of operating system preference, are able to take a relatively unbiased view of the situation, and present intelligent arguments. -BeanBagKing