Once, long ago--actually, on Thu, Aug 02, 2012 at 07:26:02PM +1000--Roger
(arelem(a)bigpond.com) said:
Er... nobody can take ownership over work that you have written,
Your work is your own, regardless of whether they own the language
you write it in or not.
True, unless:
1. You contractually grant it to another. It's quite common to either
take contracts or sign employment agreements that grant everything
you produce for a client or employer as a "work for hire".
2. It is also quite common to sign an agreement, usually as a clause in
the general contract or employment agreement, that you will cooperate
in the transfer of any patents awarded in the course of your work to
your contractor or employer.
Where is it stated that Micros[hi]t owns C++? when did this happen?
Absolutely bogus. C++ was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup while at BTL.
(though licensing of compiled binaries can be interesting depending
on your compiler license - in exactly the same way some people call
GPL infectious).
It's more common that linking in copyrighted binaries will contaminate your
code. This has not, however, been a common restriction since the GNU
library wars.
Ad for ownership, I think it depends on circumstances. I have heard
instances of when one writes a work while employed by or under
contract to a company then they do not own their work, the company
does, even if the work was done on unpaid holidays or at home during
unpaid after hours.
This used to be a common restrictive clause in employment contracts.
I haven't seen such tried in a mort of years. HOWEVER, make sure not
to sign any such agreement, and don't ever use company resources or time
to do any development you want to keep. (And, of course, never use any
information you could only have gotten from your employer or contractee.)
If, say a programmer or developer is employed by a company or
organisation and they write code and say develop a site in their own
time, using open source applications, and contribute the whole thing
to Open source or under GPL, etc, can the company/organisation stake
a claim?
Only if you signed an agreement stating such.
Also, if a programmer writes code snippets and contributes snippets
to a larger unit, for instance, a kernel or app. From the above
comment, he still owns the code snippet.
You do, unless you release ownership.
If a vast number of snippets from a vast number of coders are
donated free of encumbrance to enhance a kernel or app, how does
that make the whole (Linux) responsible for copyright violation when
no one entity owns it?
None of the snippets that are unencumbered are in trouble, _unless_ they
violate a copyright.
I'm probably waffling on here but it seems that there's more
going
on under the carpet than we may be aware of with MS. Mentioning over
200 instances yet I see no one discussing or displaying code
comparisons to show that it is true. Surely it is incumbent on the
complaintant to provide proof.
Not unless and until they actually take action. There's no advantage to
Microsoft in actually providing evidence of what they believe has been
infringed. If they do so, then developers can take steps to rewrite
and remove the offending code. If they don't, everything is suspect
of being tainted, and (they can hope) corporations are leery of using
potentially tainted code without indemnification.
Cheers,
--
Dave Ihnat
dihnat(a)dminet.com