Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Italian Covid contact-tracing app is now developed in open source

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 156 posts

Re: The Italian Covid contact-tracing app is now developed in open source

#51

Post by hobofan »

pkaye wrote: post #40
hobofan wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, but AFAIK there is no exception for employees. The employee still holds the copyright, but there is usually a clause in the employment contract that gives the employer "unrestricted usage rights" for any copyrightable product of the employee. Especially software developers should read those parts of their employment contracts carefully, as they may be overly broad and sometimes accompanied by weird clauses reg…

If the employee still owns the copyright, does that mean employees could continue to use that software after they leave the company?

In the granting of usage rights it is usually included that the employer will have exclusive usage rights as well (dependent on wording).

I don't know about the exact implications for creating very similar future work (what you would call "infringing copyright") though.

Re: The Italian Covid contact-tracing app is now developed in open source

#52

Post by stormdennis »

toohotatopic wrote: post #47
stormdennis wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hundreds of thousands are dead in Europe from a virus and these people are breaking the rules to stop its further spread because of one incident thousands of miles away that happened to be captured on a smartphone

It's also quite bizarre to see people dying because they are black. Actually it's so bizarre that people can't help but have to break rules to send a message. As far as I can tell, it's not about that one 'incident' but about all the deaths that weren't recorded, and the many lives that are spent in fear.

There are lots of black policemen in America, black police chiefs, black mayors And in terms of being killed, the people black people are most at risk from are other black people, by a wide margin

Re: The Italian Covid contact-tracing app is now developed in open source

#53

Post by mschwaig »

evolve2k wrote: post #10

Has anyone done an analysis of the various open source government contract tracing app? I’d love to read some tear down/code review articles on what each country has released.

You can find an report on the contact tracing app published by the Austrian Red Cross on this site: https://noyb.eu/en/report-red-cross-corona-app-reviewed-noyb

Note that their app was released quite early, specifically before Apple and Google announced their contact tracing plans, and media reports indicate they want to start using those APIs in the first half of June, which will be a major change.

My department at Johannes Kepler University Linz also published an analysis of the NOVID20 SDK(https://novid20.org) when the code for that was first released: https://ins.jku.at/publications/2020/Roland_2020_NOVID20_Ana...

Re: The Italian Covid contact-tracing app is now developed in open source

#54

Post by crushthecurve »

usaar333 wrote: post #20
gregwebs wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contact tracing is exactly the kind of tool that would help track outbreaks from protests. Unfortunately in the US we have almost no contact tracing going on. It is unclear how bad the spread from protests will be since protesters are outside and often wear masks, and the density of protesters can vary greatly. I haven't read of documented super spreader events that occurred exclusively outdoors, it would be great sc…

* no mobile contact tracing - lots of actual. I'm not sure how much the mobile protocols would even help in protests. Don't you need proximity with someone for 30 minutes or so to be tagged a contact?

If there was a mobile contact tracing app that used AGPS with accuracy down to ~1m maybe it would be useful?

Existing contact tracing apps use Bluetooth which can't be used to determine proximity with any reliability - solid objects (particularly human bodies) absorb significant signal.

Unless all protestors were holding their phones up high for unimpeded line-of-site connections then even protestors next to each other could 'appear' 20-30m away.

In most cases (especially in a protest situation) all Bluetooth-based contact tracing apps can tell you is that two devices are in Bluetooth range (so accuracy of ~30m?).

Re: The Italian Covid contact-tracing app is now developed in open source

#55

Post by throwaway122378 »

gregwebs wrote: post #9
ed25519FUUU wrote: post #3

Honestly Covid tracing seems fairly moot at this point. With tens of thousands of people marching in the streets every night, aren’t we all basically exposed if we’re part of any network?

Contact tracing is exactly the kind of tool that would help track outbreaks from protests. Unfortunately in the US we have almost no contact tracing going on. It is unclear how bad the spread from protests will be since protesters are outside and often wear masks, and the density of protesters can vary greatly. I haven't read of documented super spreader events that occurred exclusively outdoors, it would be great sc…

> I haven't read of documented super spreader events that occurred exclusively outdoors

this is something that people can’t seem to understand. The likelihood of spreading any Coronavirus in mass outdoors is close to zero

Re: The Italian Covid contact-tracing app is now developed in open source

#56

Post by throwaway122378 »

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #3

Honestly Covid tracing seems fairly moot at this point. With tens of thousands of people marching in the streets every night, aren’t we all basically exposed if we’re part of any network?

Upvote for you my friend since logic is looked down upon these days

Re: The Italian Covid contact-tracing app is now developed in open source

#57

Post by terramex »

pkaye wrote: post #40
hobofan wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, but AFAIK there is no exception for employees. The employee still holds the copyright, but there is usually a clause in the employment contract that gives the employer "unrestricted usage rights" for any copyrightable product of the employee. Especially software developers should read those parts of their employment contracts carefully, as they may be overly broad and sometimes accompanied by weird clauses reg…

If the employee still owns the copyright, does that mean employees could continue to use that software after they leave the company?

I'm not German, but as far as I know they have similar system to the one we have in Poland - you can transfer exclusive financial copyrights to another entity but you cannot transfer personal copyrights (so that you can say that you are the author of particular work even if you cannot license it to 3rd parties). In practice, even though personal copyright is not transferable, many employers require you to sign additional civil contract in which you declare that you will never exercise your personal copyright.

Re: The Italian Covid contact-tracing app is now developed in open source

#58

Post by usrusr »

hobofan wrote: post #35
quonn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know, in Germany copyright cannot be transferred. There is a special and limited exception for direct employees, so the company can hold the copyright, but I doubt that a client (like the government) could hold it.

IANAL, but AFAIK there is no exception for employees. The employee still holds the copyright, but there is usually a clause in the employment contract that gives the employer "unrestricted usage rights" for any copyrightable product of the employee. Especially software developers should read those parts of their employment contracts carefully, as they may be overly broad and sometimes accompanied by weird clauses reg…

Not just unrestricted usage, exclusive unrestricted usage, which is why it could be a problem (instead of just being a simple case of dual licencing) if the contract claims rights to off-hours work.

German law has a clear distinction between authorship rights and usage rights. Usage rights, including reproduction, can be sold, rented, perhaps even taken illegally at gunpoint, I don't know. It's just your run off the mill intellectual property. But authorship rights cannot be transferred at all except through inheritance, it's simply impossible for A to pay B to relinquish the right to state that B is the creator of X. But outside of literature and music where special compensation schemes exist this is only about recognition and has zero economic relevance.

This authorship right is also only available to natural persons, so it's clearly not the reason why SAP and T-Systems are still claiming copyright. It just wasn't something the state buyer cared about and given that they apparently did care to get the code under Apache 2 I can't fault them, the result is almost like a reimentation of the recognition part for companies instead of natural persons.

Re: The Italian Covid contact-tracing app is now developed in open source

#60

Post by gowld »

usrusr wrote: post #58
hobofan wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, but AFAIK there is no exception for employees. The employee still holds the copyright, but there is usually a clause in the employment contract that gives the employer "unrestricted usage rights" for any copyrightable product of the employee. Especially software developers should read those parts of their employment contracts carefully, as they may be overly broad and sometimes accompanied by weird clauses reg…

Not just unrestricted usage, exclusive unrestricted usage, which is why it could be a problem (instead of just being a simple case of dual licencing) if the contract claims rights to off-hours work. German law has a clear distinction between authorship rights and usage rights. Usage rights, including reproduction, can be sold, rented, perhaps even taken illegally at gunpoint, I don't know. It's just your run off the…

What does it mean to inherit authorship? Can I be th author of something my grandmother created? Can I bequeath my athorship to some corporation?
Post reply on HN