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A member posted in the lounge advocating that another member (who had their sample application that accompanies their article ripped off and sold for profit) should wait until the company that "stole" their code starts making a lot of money then sue them for damages.
This surely opens up a can of worms that make it less than ideal for fostering the sharing of knowledge here. No commercial company is going to take a chance on anything on CodeProject if it could result in a lawsuit to use it.
No the whole idea of licensing articles stinks and something needs to be done about it very quickly, it's very damaging to CodeProject's reputation and needs to be stopped immediately.
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Hi John,
When code is placed in Public Domain, things change a bit. For example, I know that once placed in Public Domain, one cannot receive a patent for the work. If the patent was held prior, then licensing issues play a larger role.
John Cardinal wrote: This surely opens up a can of worms that make it less than ideal for fostering the sharing of knowledge here.
Yep... I place most of my stuff in Public Domain with no restrictions. A plug for the work would be nice, but I don't expect it. I placed some stuff on Code Project specifically so that others cold not patent it later. (See the Product Keys and Product Activation Articles). Once in public domain, it becomes 'Prior Art', and cannot be patented.
John Cardinal wrote: No the whole idea of licensing articles stinks and something needs to be done about it very quickly
Grass Roots - I have no idea why one would write an article and the expect compensations (royalties, licensing, etc). He or she should not have submitted in the first place. As such, vote '1' for it. In the comments, explain why (such a score deserves an explanation in general). This will deter the future behavior (IMHO - I stress when my rating hovers around 4.5 - I try and do better work than that).
Jeff
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Jeffrey Walton wrote: As such, vote '1' for it. In the comments, explain why
Well technically as a commercial software developer I should not be reading those articles in teh first place if their idea is "licensed" as non-commercial so just commenting on the article is opening me up to a lawsuit if the poster thinks that I used the idea in my commercial software.
It's just poisonous that the option even exists to place a restrictive license on an article itself.
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Hi John,
> commercial software developer I should not be reading...
Do not be too hard on yourself. Use common sense - Fair Use. Don't copy and paste the code. The higher level ideas were presented, so use it. The author can't patent or copyright thinking - they can patent the EXE, and copyright the source code.
Jeff
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Jeffrey Walton wrote: they can patent the EXE, and copyright the source code.
Exactly and your missing the point which is that authors *are* in fact attaching a license to the article itself, not only the source code or the executable, see the original example I linked to.
I would have no problem with an author of an article presenting an idea with sample code unlicensed, then attaching a fully working application that uses that code which is licensed. The fully working application is very different from a few samples in a zip file or the text of the article itself.
It's not hard to imagine a scenario in which a commercial developer sees an article with a technique they want to use in a commercial application, the article has a no commercial useage license attached to the article itself. The developer has a question and posts it in the message board for that article. There is now a clear link between the company that develops software and the article.
Let's say the developer takes all precautions, completely rewrites the code, but the end result is the same. The article author sees the finished application and the feature that does what they outlined in the article, they feel that their idea was "stolen" for commercial purposes and they sue.
That's what I mean about licensing articles fostering a poisonous atmosphere in which no commercial company can take the risk of even reading the articles at CodeProject.
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Hi John,
John Cardinal wrote: Exactly and your missing the point
AAhh. Yep. M bad.
Jeff
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In some cases (such as mine), the code is licensed, but not necessairly the idea. In the U.S., the content of the article gets an automatic copyright on it assigned to the author:The U.S. Copyright Office wrote: Under the present copyright law, copyright exists in original works of authorship created and fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly, or indirectly with the aid of a machine or device. In other words, copyright is an incident of creative authorship not dependent on statutory formalities. Thus, registration with the Copyright Office generally is not required, but there are certain advantages that arise from a timely registration.
Actually, this technically applies to the source code as well, as it too is an original work of authorship put to a medium.
Yes, I know that this is US specific, but at least in the U.S. the concerns about copyright are moot - it is there already. Note that providing an explicit license and/or notice of copyright helps when there is no automatic copyright assigment (or if the reader is not aware of it).
Also, licensing the code is not the same as licensing the idea. For example, my code that implements the idea of having a high-throughput SMTP server that uses I/O Completion Ports is licensed, but not the idea itself. If someone wants to write their own SMTP engine using my ideas, let them. The hard work is in the code itself, not the idea.
Lots of people have great ideas - lots of developers think that encryption is a great thing to use to generate registraton keys and prevent theft of a product, but not all of them can implement them. The Sweat Equity (for lack of a better term) present in the actual implementation of the is what is being protected.
Peace!
-=- James Please rate this message - let me know if I helped or not!<HR>If you think it costs a lot to do it right, just wait until you find out how much it costs to do it wrong!
Avoid driving a vehicle taller than you and remember that Professional Driver on Closed Course does not mean your Dumb Ass on a Public Road!
See DeleteFXPFiles
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Nothing to do with copyright at all, only the licensing of the article content and the posted idea of how to litigously extract the most money from a commercial organization that implements the idea in a non commercial "licensed" article's content which is of concern to me.
James R. Twine wrote: If someone wants to write their own SMTP engine using my ideas, let them. The hard work is in the code itself, not the idea.
Exactly right, but certain authors *are* in fact trying to license the idea by licensing the article content (again, not copyright). Whether it's legal or possible to do that I don't know but it's creating a poisonous atmosphere for coporate developers, who'se bosses are justifieably risk averse and seeing that some part of their commercial application could be based on an idea that came from an article here makes it a good idea to just block and ban CodeProject altogether from the company network.
Putting restrictive licensing on article content on a site meant to foster knowledge is just bad for said site and should be stopped immediately.
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John Cardinal wrote: Nothing to do with copyright at all, only the licensing of the article content and the posted idea of how to litigously extract the most money from a commercial organization that implements the idea in a non commercial "licensed" article's content which is of concern to me.
OK - I do not license/restrict my code in order to get money out of others. My license (the JRTS-FSCL) was designed primarly to protect an author's interests and to make sure they get credit for their hard work. As such, I agree that articles should not be traps designed to try to catch the money train.
John Cardinal wrote: Putting restrictive licensing on article content on a site meant to foster knowledge is just bad for said site and should be stopped immediately.
On that, I agree with you 100% - the knowledge gained from, and/or the concepts expressed within an article posted here should be free for use. I do not believe that you should restrict the ideas presented within an article, but on the other hand, I do not feel it is my place to tell people how they should share their ideas.
My points are, and always have been, regarding the actual implementation of them (read: code). It is why developers are hired by companies - to put the company's ideas into code. It is why many of us get paid for, and thus that is where the value (and, IMHO, the danger) is.
Peace!
-=- James Please rate this message - let me know if I helped or not!<HR>If you think it costs a lot to do it right, just wait until you find out how much it costs to do it wrong!
Avoid driving a vehicle taller than you and remember that Professional Driver on Closed Course does not mean your Dumb Ass on a Public Road!
See DeleteFXPFiles
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John Cardinal wrote: the posted idea of how to litigously extract the most money from a commercial organization
Link?
You may be right
I may be crazy
-- Billy Joel --
Within you lies the power for good, use it!!!
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If CP should allow or not article with license is one thing, but Andrew case is a real case and it has a "no commercial" license, which he could have done for X reason like remove responsibility from a derivate work, just because he doesn't want to his code been use to make profit instead to share knowledge or as you said with the intention of catch up somebody using it to make profiy and sue him.
In any case those are criminal stealing and making profit from the work from another people, they did the crime, and what… the author can’t do anything to avoid that? Those people KNEW what they were doing and still keep selling it, because they trust noone will do anything.
From my point of view if they committed a crime knowing about it, then they should expect the worst of the punishment.
It is not the same kill a person by accident than intentionally murder someone, justice will apply different punishment for that. Andrew case is compared to a murdering case and not a car accident.
For that reason I tell this action should be punished.
What is your point of view? Just let them make profit and run away?
--
If you think the chess rules are not fair, first beat Anand, Kasparov and Karpov then you can change them.
Moral is, don't question the work of others if you don't know the reason why they did it.
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I am a commercial developer, when I post an article here I fully post it with the expectation it can be put to any use whatsoever. I never post code that I feel is something that would give a competitor an advantage over my own software.
I could care less what people do with it, my only motivation for posting an article is to give back to a site which helped me so much.
That being said with the current ambiguity that is being allowed to happen here I don't see myself taking advantage of or posting new articles to this site. Even visiting it for that matter if this isn't cleared up quickly one way or the other.
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John Cardinal wrote: A member posted in the lounge advocating that another member (who had their sample application that accompanies their article ripped off and sold for profit) should wait until the company that "stole" their code starts making a lot of money then sue them for damages.
IANAL, but I believe this falls under cherry-picking in that you cannot wait to enforce copyright or trademarks just because you may gain less money than if you wait for a bigger windfall. Doing so can get your copyright or trademark revoked because it can be viewed as non-enforcement of your copyright/trademark. (It is why larger companies go after even "the little guy" when it comes to infringement - they usually have to, or they may risk loosing in the long run.)
Anyway, the act of putting a license on a submission clearly spells out what can and cannot be done with it, it can grant commercial use, deny commercial use, or grant it with appropriate crediting of the original source. I do believe that there should be a default license that is granted to the reader in the absence of one provided by the author (and that is what we have already).
However, I am unclear as to how this is damaging to CP's reputation - I have not seen nor heard anything along those lines. Do you have some links we could see that demonstrate this?
Peace!
-=- James Please rate this message - let me know if I helped or not!<HR>If you think it costs a lot to do it right, just wait until you find out how much it costs to do it wrong!
Avoid driving a vehicle taller than you and remember that Professional Driver on Closed Course does not mean your Dumb Ass on a Public Road!
See DeleteFXPFiles
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I agree that the relevant license should be made more visible - perhaps by having a combo box in the header info area, where the author can select "GPL, LGPL, Apache, unrestricted, other, etc.". Then a view filter (or search filter) would be simple to implement.
It would also be handy for authors if the CP article submission wizard would include links to relevant licenses and what they mean.
But what if I wanted to use some license-restricted code that was presented in an article, by contacting author and making some arrangement? I would not want CP to disallow this, or refuse to publish the article. In fact, the current policy (which has existed from beginning) is to allow its members to interact as they want. This has certainly benefited me, and in some cases also the author, when I recommend their product to my clients.
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I think you're missing the point, there should be no license allowed whatsoever, it's just plain crazy.
This has nothing to do with disallowing members to contact each other, I don't know where you get that idea from.
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I vote that we don't accept any "licensed" code at all.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
-----
"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001
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The footer shows this message in CP
Article content copyright <authorname>, 2007<br />
everything else Copyright © CodeProject, 1999-2006
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I don't understand how this is relevant to what I posted about, perhaps you can clarify.
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John,
It was an example of how CodeProject is currently showing and/or distinguishing between how CP shows article and site copyright.
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Copyrighting and licensing are two separate issues (though they compliment one another). Copyright addresses ownership. Licensing addresses use.
Jeff
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my views
1-> code project is for sharing knowledge and not for advertising so the code posted here with the idea of
posting code and restricting it commercially is just advertising
2-> as in Andrews case a company used his dlls as it is removing all copyright notices i think this is morally
incorrect (legal aspect i don't know much)
my suggestion which i gave once before that if any author want to advertise his code CP should provide a
platform for them and take charges for overriding licenses (ie commercially restricted articles should pay CP
some thing in cash also along with code and article )
cause CP is a really very big platform and people are advertising free of cost some of them just ruin the
environment in message posts also (you know him/them)
It is Good to be Important but!
it is more Important to be Good
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Amar Chaudhary wrote: 1-> code project is for sharing knowledge and not for advertising so the code posted here with the idea of
posting code and restricting it commercially is just advertising
Restricting its commercial use is not advertising, no one is buying anything. Putting something to the effect of you must contact me to purchase a license for commercial use is. However, I have yet to encounter an article that contains copy like that.
Peace!
-=- James Please rate this message - let me know if I helped or not!<HR>If you think it costs a lot to do it right, just wait until you find out how much it costs to do it wrong!
Avoid driving a vehicle taller than you and remember that Professional Driver on Closed Course does not mean your Dumb Ass on a Public Road!
See DeleteFXPFiles
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James R. Twine wrote: Restricting its commercial use is not advertising, no one is buying anything. Putting something to the effect of you must contact me to purchase a license for commercial use is. However, I have yet to encounter an article that contains copy like that.
There's at least one RS232 article here that's licensed free for noncomercial use. The code is available for commercial license from the company that wrote it for a few hundred bucks.
--
Rules of thumb should not be taken for the whole hand.
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dan neely wrote: There's at least one RS232 article here that's licensed free for noncomercial use. The code is available for commercial license from the company that wrote it for a few hundred bucks.
That is just an example of what I said - what is the point here? Or was that the point, just to show an examples of what I meant?
-- modified at 14:42 Friday 5th January, 2007
Never mind - the "I have yet to see an article..." part just kicked in within my brain...  
Peace!
-=- James Please rate this message - let me know if I helped or not!<HR>If you think it costs a lot to do it right, just wait until you find out how much it costs to do it wrong!
Avoid driving a vehicle taller than you and remember that Professional Driver on Closed Course does not mean your Dumb Ass on a Public Road!
See DeleteFXPFiles
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