Topic: Licensing your software

[huiz]

How do you work with licenses for your code? I haven't seen any copyright or license notice in the code examples and downloadable stuff. Does that mean it is kind of public domain?

What if someone wants to publish his software as open source under GPL or another license, how to deal with parts of code or functions that come from websites like theswamp.org?

What are your thoughts about this? 

[pkohut]

At least hear in the states, all written works are automatically granted copyright to the creator. No notice of copyright needed. So taking code from here and using it in your own project could be problematic.

[huiz]

In Europe (I assume everywhere) you also directly own what you have created, like a photo or code or a painting. It is not neccessary to write copyright notices on it but I can think of more reasons to do so. Like showing it is yours, or to tell everybody that it is free to use, or not.

But if there is no copyright written, and no name, nobody knows who wrote the code. And if someone copies it to other websites, it is really hard to prove.

[pkohut]

But if there is no copyright written, and no name, nobody knows who wrote the code. And if someone copies it to other websites, it is really hard to prove.

Not really. The only reason I could think that you would lift someones software is because it does something none trivial.  If that's the case then there are many things that will help lead to the discovery that the code is lifted from another source.

Here's the deal though, if you see a routine in this forum, then it's a simple matter to just send the OP or the thread a message that you'd like permission to use it in your project. Way easier to do up front and legal. Then there are no worries that you've crossed an ethics line that you and your project could be called out on. If you do lift code a date is associated with the codes original posting.

Most of the larger GPL projects require authors to  release their code under the terms of a GPL compatible license. If I as a contributor to a project was to lift some code and include it for submission to the project, then it is up to me to get a release from the original author, otherwise the submission will not even be considered for inclusion.

Here's an example of aggressive GPL compliance enforcement http://ffmpeg.org/shame.html