Gil,
Thanks for asking the question; it is a topic that has always fascinated
me. My belief based on my personal experience only is that software may
be unusual in authors /not/ feeling that they have a strong sense of
ownership of their work, regardless of who the legal owner is. I learned
very early in my legal career that some forms of authorship (books and
music were my experience) seem to be very personal and the authors very
personally hurt by what they saw as misuse of their work. These are
difficult clients because they want their hurt fixed, but the legal
system isn't very good at that.
I don't know if it's the same phenomenon, but there is also a propensity
in some industries to see similarity, and think their work was copied,
when in the clear light of day it's simply not the case. I joke that
every successful movie has a copyright infringement suit brought by
someone who imagined similarity when there was nothing there. I don't
doubt the sincerity of the belief of the person who thinks they were
copied, but when you read the cases (and there are plenty), the
similarities are very thin.
I've always wondered if software is different because it's more
functional. There are more parameters that have to be met, so maybe it
seems more like solving a problem rather than an exercise of pure
creativity.
Pam
Pamela S. Chestek
Chestek Legal
PO Box 2492
Raleigh, NC 27602
[email protected]
919-800-8033
www.chesteklegal.com
On 3/1/20 10:50 AM, Gil Yehuda via License-discuss wrote:
Thank you Stuart, you are right. The fear of losing control is a big
part of this. Josh, indeed. All code is based on other code. This is
why there's such a conflict. Russel, I'm asking about all code authors
because there are many ways to view this.
A few times a year I get a report of code on GitHub that contains a
cleartext password to a server or an account my company owns. I find a
(usually) former employee had published a large bundle of code on her
personal GitHub repo on the day she left the company. I contact her
and request removal of that code -- it leaks a company secret. Most of
the time, it's removed right away.
Sometimes she'll say, "but it's my code." and I'll say, technically
it's work for hire that you assigned the copyrights to the company,
but I understand you feel like it's yours. Sharing internal
information is a violation of an agreement you signed. Also, it
contains a cleartext password in the code. Do you want people to think
you are the kind of coder who puts passwords in code? Or the kind of
coder who takes the employer's code and publishes it without
permission first? If you would have asked, we would have reviewed the
code and potentially given you permission to publish it once you
remove the confidential information. But this was an unauthorized
publication, we didn't put an open source license on it, no one can
use it unless we do.
Usually that works, but once in a while I'll hear "No. it's my code, I
can do whatever I want with it." and I'll say: Do you think you'd get
in trouble if someone used the password leaked in your code as part of
a larger campaign that helped them break in to our systems and expose
user data? "Um, I guess so." It this publication that important to you
that you'd take that risk? And then she takes the code down.
I could simply issue a DMCA takedown to nuke the code, but I'm
interested when an engineer insists "that code is mine" even when it
is a liability. This is a different case than we typically talk about,
but I bring it to show that some people are attached to their code
since they invest considerable energy into it -- and fear that letting
go removes their control of the code. Indeed this is the reality of
the corporate-employed engineer -- but it's not always the way the
perceive that reality. I'm not suggesting this is ideal, but I think
control and trust are factors here.
Gil Yehuda: I help with external technology engagement
From the Open Source Program Office
<https://developer.yahoo.com/opensource/docs/> at Yahoo --> Oath - ->
Verizon Media
On Sat, Feb 29, 2020 at 1:00 PM Russell McOrmond
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On Fri, Feb 28, 2020 at 11:31 AM Gil Yehuda via License-discuss
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I'm exploring the psychological relationship between the
author of a work, and the work. i.e. parsing the phrase "my
open source code" and would like your thoughts.
What you appear to be asking is how proprietary people feel about
the software they have authored.
Google has one of the early questions I asked in gnu.misc.discuss
back in 1992:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/gnu.misc.discuss/PWcsCnGzDkI/DwXUQ5Lg_OwJ
I wanted to add a GPL license to my derivative of software that
was dedicated to the public domain, as I wanted to ensure that
follow-on contributions would not be able to be made proprietary
(meaning, software licensed primary for the benefit of a
proprietor). The only restriction I wanted was the restriction to
not allow personal/proprietary restrictions on derivatives
(freedom from). This was a concept that wasn't as clear with the
4 software freedoms from the FSF at the time, but became much more
clear with the Debian Free Software guidelines that became the
OSD. This includes the non-discriminatory core of the OSD,
understanding that demands for discrimination are personal to a
proprietor and thus make the license proprietary.
I liked what I learned in gnu.misc.discuss back in 1992, and
became an active part of the movement as a software contributor
and policy advocate. In 2002 I was the private-sector co-founder
of GOSLING (Getting Open Source Logic INto Government)
http://goslingcommunity.org/
<http://goslingcommunity.org/#content> , and have been a witness
at various parliamentary committees, met many members of Canada's
federal parliament, and have been both a volunteer and paid
consultant to bureaucracies on FLOSS policy.
While I did these things, and I enjoy receiving credit for the
contributions I have made, I do not at all feel proprietary about
any of the results. Whether my work is encoded in the form of
machine readable instructions (software) or human readable
instructions (policy, submissions to government consultations,
etc), I consider the work to have more value the more it is built
upon, and the less personal to me the results become.
One of my influences is Lawrence Lessig and his "Code and other
laws of cyberspace". http://codev2.cc/
I believe there are many things in common between software code
and legal code.
If the elected official who introduced a bill in a parliament kept
referring to it as "my law" after it passed and became the law of
the land, people would not be respectful of that proprietary
perspective. If there was preamble that said that the policy
encoded in the bill could not be introduced in the governments of
unfriendly parliaments,t he preamble would be ridiculed. I have
the same view about software code which I consider to be part of
the rules that govern our lives, and while I don't ridicule people
for feeling proprietary about their contributions as that is not
yet the common culture, it is not something that I personally respect.
I am grateful for when I'm in the company of fellow long-time
FLOSS advocates who feel the same way, and who don't need to have
explained why the personal desires/politics/etc of an individual
software author should not be a consideration once software has
been released and is used publicly.
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