[oclug] Code Ownership ??

[William Case]

On Tue, 2007-04-10 at 11:19 -0400, miden wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-04-10 at 10:29 -0400, William Case wrote:
> 
> > Fred, a wide ranging discussion of property rights, ownership and
> > economic systems is what I am trying to avoid in this particular thread
> > -- as interesting as it may be.
> > 
> > I am trying to ask a very concrete question for the here and now.
> > 
> > If I point at a particular piece of code, what are my (or other
> > people's) proprietary (ownership) rights or what are they likely to be.
> > I know rights vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and by type (i.e.
> > copyright or patent).  I am not trying to understand, at this point,
> > what various disputes might be, or how they should be resolved, but
> > rather, what is the thing that copyrights and/or patents and/or disputes
> > apply to.
> > 
> > If I write my 50 lines of code, is it the literal 50 lines of source? Is
> > it the compiled binary? If someone writes the same thing but uses
> > another programming language are the rights the same?  etc ...  I
> > suppose I am asking, what is the object of all these rights and
> > disputes?  Not, what are the various rights involved?
> > 
> 
> I expect the object is to protect the investment in development and the
> ability to make money from that investment but like you (I think) I
> would like to know at what level that protection starts.
> 
A small nit pic.  Your answer above applies to the "objective" of
establishing rights.  My use of 'object' refers to the thing to which
the rights apply -- as you have so clearly outlined below.

> Is it the individual lines of code (as in 'this code has never been seen
> before I came up with it') or is it the (unique?) arrangement of those
> lines (which may make possible some new behaviour or use), is it the
> concept that resulted in the writing of the code, or all of the above?
> 
> Perhaps some programmer on the list could indicate what they try to do
> or avoid doing (in order to avoid legal disputes) when writing a
> program.
> 
> Would this be helpful, Bill?
> 
> -m
> 
Thank you miden.  You put the question better than I did.


-- 
Regards Bill