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How TaxCloud Stole My Code and How I'm Doing Something About It

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Re: How TaxCloud Stole My Code and How I'm Doing Something About It

#31

Post by kkowalczyk »

boop wrote: post #29
mdasen wrote: post #21

I'm curious what license you're using (since there's no mention in the readme). It seems clear that you wrote this to be open source and help people. Since there's no license information, third parties (ie, people who aren't you) should assume that they have no right to use it (that it's proprietary since there's nothing offering other rights). You've said it's open source, but under what terms can I (or TaxCloud) us…

"You haven't explicitly licensed your code under any license and so, to be conservative, third parties should operate under the assumption that the code is proprietary" I would have guessed that without an explicit license, open source is free for anyone to take/modify/reuse. After all, it is open source. In other words, the default would be the most permissive license. You suggest it is the opposite - that without a…

There's nothing to clarify.

Creative work (including source code) automatically falls under "all rights reserved" bucket unless the author specifically states other licensing terms.

In this case the author didn't so his work is still "all rights reserved" and no-one can use it.

You're confusing "source code available" with "open-source".

"Open source" is a shortcut for: "source code available and under open-source license".

What license is an open-source license? OSI has a detailed checklist: http://opensource.org/docs/osd

(nitpicker corner: to the extent a vague term as "open source" can be defined; people disagree as to what exactly it means).

Re: How TaxCloud Stole My Code and How I'm Doing Something About It

#32

Post by drewcrawford »

boop wrote: post #29
mdasen wrote: post #21

I'm curious what license you're using (since there's no mention in the readme). It seems clear that you wrote this to be open source and help people. Since there's no license information, third parties (ie, people who aren't you) should assume that they have no right to use it (that it's proprietary since there's nothing offering other rights). You've said it's open source, but under what terms can I (or TaxCloud) us…

"You haven't explicitly licensed your code under any license and so, to be conservative, third parties should operate under the assumption that the code is proprietary" I would have guessed that without an explicit license, open source is free for anyone to take/modify/reuse. After all, it is open source. In other words, the default would be the most permissive license. You suggest it is the opposite - that without a…

Under the Berne convention, all works produced in any signatory country are automatically subject to copyright: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention_for_the_Protec...

Wikipedia says "A typical software license grants an end-user permission to use one or more copies of software in ways where such a use would otherwise potentially constitute copyright infringement of the software owner's exclusive rights under copyright law." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_license

You may be basing your prior belief on e.g. Wikipedia's claim (scroll down) that "A primary consequence of the free software form of licensing is that acceptance of the license is essentially optional — the end-user may use, study, and privately modify the software without accepting the license." IANAL, but this statement seems dangerously incorrect to me. It may be technically correct that you do not "have" to accept the license terms--but then if you are downloading the software, or creating derivative works without a license, you would be violating the law. E.g.

Uploading or downloading works protected by copyright without the authority of the copyright owner is an infringement of the copyright owner's exclusive rights of reproduction and/or distribution. - http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-digital.html#p2p

Re: How TaxCloud Stole My Code and How I'm Doing Something About It

#33

Post by jaggederest »

jpalomaki wrote: post #30

A general request (not specifically towards the author): If you release a project under open source license, please be specific about what kind of attribution you would like to get when your project is used within a product. Giving credit would be so much easier if one could use for example Maven or npm to automatically create a list of attributions that could be then formatted and included in the "About page".

Ruby's gemspec format includes an array of authors or a singular author for this purpose. It's quite handy.

Re: How TaxCloud Stole My Code and How I'm Doing Something About It

#34

Post by jakejake »

praptak wrote: post #26
jakejake wrote: post #19

The author writes about his love of contributing to open source, but since his code has no license this may not even be open source code at all. The author should put some kind of license with his code so that it is used the way he wishes. If he wants credit, there are attribution licenses out there. GPL may help to get contributions back to your code. Different licenses will have different results. Also, hypothetica…

> if the official API was GPL Assuming APIs are copyrightable to start with. There is no broad ruling that they aren't (except maybe in EU: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120502083035371 ) but Oracle tried to claim copyright on APIs and failed.

Agreed, I should have clarified that I meant hypothetically if the author started out with some example code that was supplied by the API owner under the GPL.

Re: How TaxCloud Stole My Code and How I'm Doing Something About It

#35

Post by paulsutter »

What do you really expect from them? Being vague isn't helping the situation.

- If you just want attribution and an apology, ask for that.

- If they dont know what you want, they may just remain silent.

It was probably a lower-level mixup, some programmer was in a hurry, had too many tickets under his name, and rushed out a solution. The company was probably unaware.

Making veiled references to some action you might take just means they will refer it to a lawyer, who will say, "Just keep quiet and dont change anything right away. It's unlikely he has an Oracle-vs-Google sized budget to make a case, and anything you say or do might work against you. Rewrite it as soon as you can think of another justification, and be sure to create an email trail for that."

Re: How TaxCloud Stole My Code and How I'm Doing Something About It

#37

Post by jrockway »

Although you still get copyright protection without it, a comment at the top of every source file with your name and the license makes it very easy for people to figure out who owns what. You didn't have any license, you didn't have any authorship or copyright headers in your source code, and then you asked the company that "stole" your code to take a look and share the code with others.

The problem is that you're communicating in a very vague manner: you should be explicit about all of your expectations and intentions so others interacting with you don't have to guess what you're thinking.

Imagine how this interaction would have gone if your source file started with:

    # Copyright (c) 2012 My Consulting Firm
    
    # This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
    # it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
    # the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
    # (at your option) any later version.

    # This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    # but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    # MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    # GNU General Public License for more details.

    # You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    # along with this program.  If not, see .
And you emailed them saying:

"Hello. I've created a gem that's licensed under the GPLv3 for interacting with your service. Please feel free to link to it or redistribute it on your website under the same terms."

My guess is: this problem would have never occurred.

Re: How TaxCloud Stole My Code and How I'm Doing Something About It

#38

Post by calpaterson »

boop wrote: post #29
mdasen wrote: post #21

I'm curious what license you're using (since there's no mention in the readme). It seems clear that you wrote this to be open source and help people. Since there's no license information, third parties (ie, people who aren't you) should assume that they have no right to use it (that it's proprietary since there's nothing offering other rights). You've said it's open source, but under what terms can I (or TaxCloud) us…

"You haven't explicitly licensed your code under any license and so, to be conservative, third parties should operate under the assumption that the code is proprietary" I would have guessed that without an explicit license, open source is free for anyone to take/modify/reuse. After all, it is open source. In other words, the default would be the most permissive license. You suggest it is the opposite - that without a…

The normal rule is actually to assume that all rights are reserved.

Re: How TaxCloud Stole My Code and How I'm Doing Something About It

#39

Post by orjan »

drewtemp wrote: post #12
calvin wrote: post #6

Drew's gem doesn't specify a license. It may be open source, but it's not clear what the license is. That doesn't help in this kind of a situation.

Correct. No license implies copyright.

Copyright exists regardless of license. So to say "implies copyright" isn't exactly true.

Re: How TaxCloud Stole My Code and How I'm Doing Something About It

#40

Post by theallan »

boop wrote: post #29
mdasen wrote: post #21

I'm curious what license you're using (since there's no mention in the readme). It seems clear that you wrote this to be open source and help people. Since there's no license information, third parties (ie, people who aren't you) should assume that they have no right to use it (that it's proprietary since there's nothing offering other rights). You've said it's open source, but under what terms can I (or TaxCloud) us…

"You haven't explicitly licensed your code under any license and so, to be conservative, third parties should operate under the assumption that the code is proprietary" I would have guessed that without an explicit license, open source is free for anyone to take/modify/reuse. After all, it is open source. In other words, the default would be the most permissive license. You suggest it is the opposite - that without a…

How do you know it is open source without a license? Sure you can see the source code, but I wouldn't have said that is what makes it open - its the license that does.
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