Insuring Contributed Code is Legal? 71
WanderingGhost asks: "Suppose you start a free software project and have people from all over the world wanting to contribute (hey, that's good eh?) How can you tell if they actually have the right to contribute at all? Contributors may live in different countries and work for different companies, and that means different laws and different contractual agreements. Aside from asking the person (I've found that this doesn't always work), what else would you do? Is there some place where you can find all information about IP laws of different countries (for example Japan, India, China, Russia) just so you can tell what would be the 'default holder of copyright' if a work contract says nothing about IP rights?"
Not quite... (Score:5, Informative)
This grammatic lesson brought to you by the letter, "e".
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Here's what happens when you insure stuff:
Well I'm a sucker for fine Cuban cigars
The problem is I can't afford 'em
But last year I went an
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You're right about the use of the word thou.
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If you really want to INSURE the code... (Score:2)
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See:
http://www.answers.com/topic/insure [answers.com]
http://www.answers.com/topic/ensure [answers.com]
http://www.answers.com/topic/assure [answers.com]
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I'm sure if I used these interchangeably, you'd be understandably upset.
While answers.com says they supposedly mean the same thing, I don't know anyone (besides the submitter and
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Although Webster online agrees with about.com, there is an extra statement in the definition of "ensure" that ensures that your sentence means what you think it means (see what I did there?...)
"but ENSURE may imply a virtual guarantee <the government has ensured the safety of the refugees>,"
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http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ensure [wiktionary.org]
(which strikes me as actually being wrong...)
I hadn't ever really looked at wiktionary before, but the synonym as definition of synonym stuff is a poor idea.
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2. (US) to insure.
"Ensure" is only synonymous with "insure" in the US. I'm not in the US, so this seems to me to be the same as Americans not being able to spell "humour" and "colour".
Although, having said that....have you ever heard a Canadian say "Detroit"? That's the worst mangling of phonetic pronunciation I've ever heard......
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Being from Michigan(you should hear the fun people have trying to make up a word for that; Michiganian, Michigander, Yooper, Go back to Ohio/Indiana/Illinois), I have certainly heard Detroit said in many ways. I think they are probably using a French 'i', which makes a bit of sense if you look at the history and so forth.
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"Insuring Contributed Code Is Legal?" -- Asks the question "What is the legality of purchasing insurance on contributed code?"
"Ensuring Contributed Code Is Legal?" -- Asks how to make sure code that is contributed is legal.
Given the context of the article, only #2 is correct.
I've seen a lot of "common usage" and "evolution of the language" bullcrap about errors like this, and they don't make sense. If the use of a word is stupid and doesn't make sense, then
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I love you Stephen Colbert! (Score:2)
I've seen a lot of "common usage" and "evolution of the language" bullcrap about errors like this, and they don't make sense. If the use of a word is stupid and doesn't make sense, then maybe it should be changed, but we have a clear distinction between the two words "insure" and "ensure".
I'm sure glad we've got people like you around to tell us what's-what. Guys like you don't need books to tell you what's correct. Guy's like you just go by what their gut tells them.
That doesn't give you an excuse to dec
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The narrow definition of insure as 'protect by insurance' seems fairly recent. OED2 has citations from 1724, 1825 and 1864 of insure as 'To make safe, to secure, to guarantee (against, from): = ASSURE v. 1c, ENSURE v. 6', see insure v. 6. Merriam-Webster's dictionary of English Usage (1994) has several citations of insure as ensure, from 1969, 1982, and 1986:
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Probably this thread is mostly forgotten by now, but just in case anybody's still paying attention, here's what the Oxford English Dictionary has to say about the situation:
The form INSURE is properly a mere variant of ensure, and still occasionally appears in all the surviving senses. In general usage, however, it is now limited to the financial sense (with reference to 'insurance' of life or property), in which the form ensure is wholly obsolete.
So, at one time, the two were entirely sy
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Also brought to us by the outstanding editors of Slashdot.
But how do I Ensure that my Insured Code is Legal? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:But how do I Ensure that my Insured Code is Leg (Score:3)
That's why you insure, to rest assured that if sued good legal defense is ensured.
Now, can anyone come up with a good haiku for this?
Re:But how do I Ensure that my Insured Code is Leg (Score:5, Funny)
Lawyers battle like thunder
Assured rest ensured
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Also, if you don't write code to something controversial (think encryption and similar technologies) then you won't get into problems so fast. And if some of the code would be copyrighted, then all they have to do is prove it and I'll remove it
I assume it's legal... (Score:1, Funny)
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Signed affidavits are the answer! (Score:2, Insightful)
IANAL, but I did sleep in my own bed last night. (Tis a joke and a serious sta
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That seems interesting.
Something like: the contributor signs a statement *and* the key he'll use
to commit to the repository (because my CVS doesn't use GPG keys). If anything
goes wrong, then I have his letter stating that everything is legal, and if he
didn't have the right to do that, he's in trouble and I'm not.
But does that always work? regardless of what he claims, if the code is not his,
it may belong to someone. And I may need to revert the commit
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I meant, "my VCS, Monotone, uses a key that is not compatible with GPG"
Re:Signed affidavits are the answer! (Score:5, Interesting)
I hereby certify that the work I have submitted to is my own work, which I am entitled to licence under the provisions of , and that I am not aware of any patents or other legal issues that may prevent its use in . I hereby grant a licence to distribute the work under the terms of (attached).
You possibly also want to include a similarly phrased paragraph to cover future submissions by the same contributor, if you expect any.
What this does is (again, IANAL, so this isn't legal advice, check it with a professional, actual facts may vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction):
1. Means you've performed "due diligence" before accepting the work. You've got a signed statement from somebody stating that there wouldn't be any issues. If you do have legal expenses insurance (and I'd recommend it; at least where I live it isn't expensive) your insurers will almost certainly want to see something like this before they'll agree to defend you in a court case. In a court case, I think it would be enough to show that you hadn't knowingly infringed any copyrights, which may be enough to prevent any damages being awarded against you. You'd have to cease distribution, of course, but in the end it would probably not actually cost you anything. It's probably not as good in the case of a patent infringement, where I believe strict liability rules apply, but that's substantially less likely to affect you, fortunately.
2. Means you've got a clear, easy to prove licence to distribute, so your contributor can't turn around and sue you. Yes, this is unlikely, but it's great to cover all angles.
A GPG-signed e-mail may be adequate, but check with a lawyer. In my jurisdiction, I believe it would be iff I could prove the key belonged to the person I believe it to, which can be a quite tricky proposition. In yours, it might not be acceptable at all. Check everything. A signed fax may be better than an e-mail. This is the kind of knowledge you pay a lawyer for.
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Ahem.
I hereby certify that the work I have submitted to [project] is my own work, which I am entitled to licence under the provisions of [licence], and that I am not aware of any patents or other legal issues that may p
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It's really insane for people to have to seek out a lawyer and pay for legal advice for common issues such as this. This is where the internet and sharing information should help. I'd say asking on Slashdot is a good start. I'm sure if he keeps poking around he'll find some good advice by others who were faced with the same problem.
Besides the money, the other problem with hiring a lawyer is that you may
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1. Armchair lawyers. Sure, I'm one of 'em. I like to think I'm better than most, but it's very hard to tell who's reliable and who isn't.
2. This kind of thing varies from place to place. You need somebody local.
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It's all
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You just have to trust that if some corporation (they almost always are) takes exception that you can demonstrate identify who contributed what so you can pass the blame rather than taking the rap yourself.
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You just have to trust that if some corporation (they almost always are) takes exception that you can demonstrate identify who contributed what so you can pass the blame rather than taking the rap yourself.
The concern here is probably not so much who takes the blame than for keeping the project alive. A finding that the contributor screwed it up doesn't protect the project from the loss of his code. If the project is going to survive, it should probably be the one to defend its code.
If you've got docum
The only thing you know for sure... (Score:1, Offtopic)
Universal Problem (Score:3, Informative)
If it's a small project I wouldn't worry too much in any case. Otherwise, make the programmers agree to some statement before you'll accept their work (it could be an "informal" email). And always remember that estoppel is your best friend.
IANAL, but my key fear with using any copyrighted material is authors being able to revoke a license. Copyright and licensing laws are quite strong after all.
Re:Universal Problem (Score:4, Interesting)
I see your point...
If it's a small project I wouldn't worry too much in any case. Otherwise, make the programmers agree to some statement before you'll accept their work (it could be an "informal" email). And always remember that estoppel is your best friend.
The problem is that the contributor himself may not fully understand what he can and what he cannot do. And then after something comes up, I'd have a big company telling me to shut down my project (because it may not be possible to revert a big, findamental patch, for example).
IANAL, but my key fear with using any copyrighted material is authors being able to revoke a license. Copyright and licensing laws are quite strong after all.
Not in the case of the GNU GPL, as far as I understand. I have asked a lawyer about this once (last year I guess).
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I don't think this is avoidable, unfortunately. If you have to remove a fundamental piece of code due to copyright considerations, that's going to effectively mean reverting your codebase to the point it was added and starting again from there. Code added after it was may be a derivitive under copyright law, so you probably can't use
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Authors can't revoke licenses unless they put it in the license agreement, period. What could be reason for concern is that contributor never had the right to license it in the first place, like for example an employee doing a work for hire, in which case the copyright defaults to the company. They could come after your project and demand that you remo
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This also provides a probable protection against a wilfull violation accusation. If the donor honestly believed that (s)he had the right to donate and the recipient pro
Ask a lawyer, maybe? (Score:1, Redundant)
misspelling may provide the answer! (Score:5, Funny)
well.. it was just a thought..
Copyright assignment (Score:3, Interesting)
More info here [fsf.org].
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If you do give it to FSF, then they pretty much decide which version of the GPL it is distributed on wereas if you keep the copytight you make that decision. It would come in handy if your one of those that don't think the GPLv3 is in the same spirit as the GPLv2. It won't be long and the GPL comunity will be fractured, confused, and most likley dead (like BSD) so I guess it is just a minor point anyways.
Using the Linux kernel model (Score:1, Interesting)
RedHat 6 used the BSD lp code and didn't fufill the 'advertising clause' (same with Microsoft and NT)
And somewhere on slashdot you can find out all about the ATA code issue.
You are just going to have to keep detailed records of who submitted what, and have 'em agree to a contract to sign over the code AND agree that it wasn't code taken fro
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Assuming that BSD lp is copyright the University of California, that shouldn't be a problem, because they scrapped the advertising clause (I think even if the license still includes the clause, it isn't valid anymore).
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Kinda slow on the uptake. Back when they didn't include the statement 'portions copywrite University of California' is WAS still part of the licence.
Not shocking you were upmodded - pro-linux stuff always gets upmodded.
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Microsoft license [microsoft.com]
You can't (Score:1)
There are companies that offer a service to scan code for known open source code so that propietary code doesn't get caught by GPL and other license issues. But you can't scan the other way around since propietary code is not always published.
The only thing you can do is verify the real identity of the contributers so they can be prosecuted if they do something bad and hope that serves as a deterrent.
This problem isn't exactly original with software. Plagiarism has affected publishing almost from the
Don't worry about it. (Score:2, Insightful)
Slashdot . . . (Score:4, Informative)
You go to
I'm in my last few days of law school, but IANAL, so this is not legal advice. However, I wrote a paper last year on what happens when the contract regarding an IP project is silent regarding the final holder of the IP (US specific). If you are an employee of the recipient of the IP, then you are not the IP holder, your employer is. When you're the independent contractor, then things get tricky. Depending on the amount of control the contractee has over your work (e.g. it tells you what to do more like an employer than a client who approves the final product), then at best you have the copyright, but the contractee has a non-exclusive license to do what it likes with the product. In 77 suits on the subject, an independent contractor tried to protect its IP rights and lost in all but a handful of cases owing to the non-exclusive license (which is governed by state contract law not IP law as Congress has excluded non-exclusive licenses by negative inference). The only trend I saw was that the larger the market capitalization of the infringing defendant, the greater likelihood that the court would find for the defendant.
The worst case was an architectural firm who drew up plans for a shopping mall development with intent to be the sole-source provider of architectural services. The plans were never on file with the city, but the plans were approved and the developer sold the project to another company. The other company hired its own architectural firm to redo the plans. The other firm erased all references to the original firm, made a few changes, and then submitted the plans as its own. Naturally, the first company sued, and the 9th Circuit said "you lose." The copyright was non-exclusively licensed to the original company through complete silence of the original contract, and so that license was transferred to the other company and finally to the other firm. The implication was that the architectural firm "intended" the other, competing firm to profit from its work---which is nonsense as no firm would want a competitor to turn its product into its own and profit without any compensation or acknowledgment.
Always, always, always get it in writing. Silence can be deadly.
You cannot avoid (Score:1)
What the f. (Score:1)