toad013
05-13-2006, 10:51 PM
I'm doing a paper at school about the rights a programmer has for licensing and copyrights. I've been doing a little research but i'm still a little confused on some areas.
Let me set up the situation. First I want to address the issue of a programmer copyrighting their own software. Then I want to address the issue of a program being put online (including source code) for further development and then another company using that source code and making it theirs. basically, i want to run this paper in conjuction with individualism and their rights.
For the first issue I think I may have ran across the Intellectual Property and Copyright laws.
For the second I stumbled upon the GPL. However, I really don't understand how this works. I think I understand that it must have a couple conditions: one being access to source code another being freedom to modify and redistribute.
Let's say I make a program and a company happens to get the source and use it in their own program without making it non-proprietary. Is there a way to tell that it was my program? (such as disassembly). Also, since there is freedom to modify and freedom to understand, if they modified the code what constitues such a significant change that it wouldn't be protected under the license anymore?
i'm totally lost on this. i hope you guys could help thanks.
Let me set up the situation. First I want to address the issue of a programmer copyrighting their own software. Then I want to address the issue of a program being put online (including source code) for further development and then another company using that source code and making it theirs. basically, i want to run this paper in conjuction with individualism and their rights.
For the first issue I think I may have ran across the Intellectual Property and Copyright laws.
For the second I stumbled upon the GPL. However, I really don't understand how this works. I think I understand that it must have a couple conditions: one being access to source code another being freedom to modify and redistribute.
Let's say I make a program and a company happens to get the source and use it in their own program without making it non-proprietary. Is there a way to tell that it was my program? (such as disassembly). Also, since there is freedom to modify and freedom to understand, if they modified the code what constitues such a significant change that it wouldn't be protected under the license anymore?
i'm totally lost on this. i hope you guys could help thanks.