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Don't confuse patents and copyright. If the author has placed a restrictive license on the software, you can't just copy it verbatim. It does not however prohibit you from reading the article and code, and make use of the ideas within. Only patents offer that kind of protection.
--
Made From Meat By-Products
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I agree, but there is open talk here of the best way to sue someone who uses something from an article with a non-commercial use license. Whether it will win or not it's still a risk and something coporations are extremely averse to.
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I think:
* articles posted here must not be protected by patents
* source code licenses should be non-intrusive
The patents argument is self explanatory. That is a big threat to any company in this day and age.
By non-intrusive source code licenses I mean licenses that:
1) does not affect your own code (such as GPL)
2) does not stipulate distribution (binary only)
3) does not require you to publish derivative works
I do think however that any author should have the right to protect his and his work's name. For instance, suppose someone posts an article about an application here, together with its source code. The code is free to use in any way you'd like. In such cases, I think it's quite alright if the author adds the following license clause "publish the work, or derivative work, in any way you'd like, but not with my name or my application's name".
I also think it's quite alright if the author requires you to retain his copyright notices in the source code.
By requiring authors NOT to use any kind of licenses on their works, there would be less real articles here, and more "How print numbers in ASP ,please hlep!!" type of articles. I think Chris's "fair license clause" should be a bit more precise.
Anyway, you do not have to worry about being caught "stealing code", unless you've actually done so! In any civilized society, the burden of proof is on the plaintiff, not the defendent. If you haven't violated any license agreements, you have nothing to worry about.
--
Simulcast on Crazy People's Fillings
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I like the idea of sharing ideas on Code Project however I get grumpy when I find CP submissions copied and pasted into project without referencing who wrote it. When I was consulting I would find this from time to time and it is just not right. Someone finds the code they need on CP and pastes/references into their project and remove the authors name so it looks like their code. If someone goes to the trouble of building the code they should get the credit.
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At the very least, as well as a thank you in the docs.
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KevinMac wrote: Someone finds the code they need on CP and pastes/references into their project and remove the authors name so it looks like their code.
Of course, you can go too far the other way as well - i've found source files nearly ten years old, code written by someone at Microsoft in response to a support call (who knows where or when). None of it actually in use anymore, and most of it long ago modified beyond recognition, as the bug in Windows 3.1 it originally worked around became less important... But all of the comments were still intact.
At some point, you just remove comments to avoid confusion.
I'll leave copyright notices intact 'till i've changed most of the signatures, re-factored larger methods, made the whole mess Unicode-friendly, and changed variable names to match local conventions. At that point, it's my code - complaints and bug reports should go to me, and while i'll leave a note at the top of the file crediting the original author for inspiration or whatever, i'm not gonna send future maintainers out to a CP article when little or none of the code they'll be looking at will match what they'll find.
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John Cardinal wrote: I see no problem with applications attached to an article being licensed in any form and of course the article's author should retain their copyright and attribution etc, but I see a major problem for CodeProject's future if it allows users to license the article content itself and small samples of code.
Putting code in the public domain is pretty much just begging a crappy code-only site to come along and rip it off. If an author wants to do that, fine, but i'd hate to see the site mandate it. LGPL, BSD, and the Mozilla license all make it fairly easy to evaluate, learn from, and use code - i don't mind seeing any of them on the work attached to an article.
I cringe though, when i see "non-commercial use only". How worthless is that? Most of the software i write is written either for my own use (as part of my job), or for others within the same company. Is that commercial? What if i give CDs away as a way to encourage the use of other (commercial) products? What if the code finds its way into a larger library, that then is used by software from another group - am i responsible for keeping track of this damn thing until it dies? Do i get lawyers involved?
And don't even get me started about some of the brain-damage coming out of Microsoft, where there are specific restrictions on what sort of software you can write after seeing the code. Yeesh.
I don't want to think about any of this. Either the code solves my problem, or it doesn't. If you can't use an existing, relatively well-understood license, you probably don't really want to share your code anyway - so don't waste my time.
And that goes double for the assholes posting these articles with full intention of tracking down violators and "punishing" them. What a complete waste of time and effort, not to mention pissing away the good will towards contributors most of us here still hold. Look, buddy - your code ain't that great. If someone stole it, take it as a complement, or feel sorry for him - your choice. But leave it at that, or don't share it at all.
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Shog9 wrote: Putting code in the public domain is pretty much just begging a crappy code-only site to come along and rip it off. If an author wants to do that, fine, but i'd hate to see the site mandate it.
I agree, I used the wrong terminology, what I mean is that copyright is a given and a good thing, that a complete application attached to an article should certainly be licenseable any way the author sees fit, but I don't for a second think it's ok to place a license of any kind on the contents of the article or small snippets of code in the article itself.
Judging by the votes my post got either there are not a lot of commercial developers here, people misunderstand my original post or I'm increasingly hanging out at the wrong site and judging by the silence from the powers that be over this issue I'm increasingly leaning towards the feeling I shouldn't be hanging out here any more.
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John Cardinal wrote: Judging by the votes my post got
...you should have had me write it for you. 
Actually, I suspect you were voted down because of the PD confusion. It probably didn't help that the article you linked to (IconLib) seems to have some confusion as to its license (AFAIK, the author states BSD-style, but links to a CC license, which isn't quite the same thing and is hard to understand when applied to code). I don't think (from reading the article) that he's trying to be troublesome with it, but such are the pitfalls of licensing. And, for this site to be useful while preserving authors' copyrights, some sort of licensing is absolutely necessary!
I don't think for a moment that the majority here are in favor of onerous licenses. As far as commercial development goes, the GPL becomes troublesome for "software as a product" development (which i believe is what you mean when you use "commercial"). And explicit non-commercial licenses are pretty much a PitA all around (but i've seen these most often from commercial developers looking to use an article as advertising for their product). Because of this, i really like your idea for a tag+filtration system: combined with a limited list of licensing options for those posting code, it could make this mess a whole lot more manageable.
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John Cardinal wrote: any article we submit here is public domain.
I see from some of the replies that you've had to clarify this point. I guess when used properly Public Domain should be capitalized. At any rate, the basic statement is still valid:
"any article we submit here is available to the public"
and the public is both great and unwashed.
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The "Message Removed" bit of functionality is absolutely brilliant.
![Rose | [Rose]](https://www.codeproject.com/script/Forums/Images/rose.gif)
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I especially like the fact that it prevents people responding to it.
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I was replying to a Lounge post that was subsequently deleted (before I submitted my reply). CP informed me an error had occured and asked me to retry the operation. Clicking the retry link displayed the error message "You cannot post to this forum". Obviously not a biggie, but it looks like the error handling could be less generic.
Also, I thought deleting a post no longer physically removed it but just rendered it as "Deleted"? It seems deleted posts are indeed being deleted and causing thread rendering gremlins.
/ravi
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Sometimes the error messages are not related to your specific operation. Sometimes the server just plain dies.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
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Chris Maunder wrote: Sometimes the server just plain dies.
And we have a nice little service for it. Maybe some flowers. A choir or two.
the last thing I want to see is some pasty-faced geek with skin so pale that it's almost translucent trying to bump parts with a partner - John Simmons / outlaw programmer
Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.
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I may be thinking wrong, but I thought that the messages in Question Time used to come from both article responses and forum posts? I realize most forum posts are answers, so maybe forum posts were removed?
Is it possible to add just the beginning message of new forum threads? or, since Question Time rotates pretty quick already, maybe it could be a seperate box?
Regards,
>>>-----> MikeO
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Question time shows new questions posted to both articles and the programming forums
cheers,
Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
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Are programming forums a subset of the message boards?
>>>-----> MikeO
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Yes
cheers,
Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
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Looks like Jean Edwidge Luxama[^] deleted a post in the C++ forum, but only the text of it was deleted, check the post just after Image compression?[^] thread.
I'd love to help, but unfortunatley I have prior commitments monitoring the length of my grass. :Andrew Bleakley:
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Fixed
cheers,
Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
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Another idea I had is to have an article to PDF conversion so people can download articles for future use. Is there any chance that something like this could be implemented in CP articles?
Thanks.
Trinity: Neo... nobody has ever done this before.
Neo: That's why it's going to work.
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Have your tried saving the file to MHT?
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Although it would be nice if CP did this automatically have you tried using the "Print Article" link to remove ads and then use a printer like CutePDF to print to a pdf file.
Not as nice I know but workable all the same, I've done this in the past to save articles.
I have no idea what I just said. But my intentions were sincere.
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Ed.Poore wrote: Although it would be nice if CP did this automatically have you tried using the "Print Article" link to remove ads and then use a printer like CutePDF to print to a pdf file.
Yes, but I just thought that an automatic PDF creator would be nice.
Trinity: Neo... nobody has ever done this before.
Neo: That's why it's going to work.
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