RE: What are a programmer's rights to what he writes?

[Pete Hall <pbhall@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 10:28 05/23/2000 , Chris Bipes wrote:
>(IMO, not so humble)  Well a lot of what I have done here I learned on the
>job, magazines articles, This List or others like it, and other programmers.
>To take whole applications is unethical.  To keep generic skeletons that I
>developed over the years, and all copy from as well, is the programmers
>rights.  I have posted some of my work here and on my private web site and
>intend to keep doing so.  I will not take backups of source libraries from
>here but I will use what I have posted should I ever leave.  Most of what we
>have here has grown over the years and the junior programmers as well as
>more experience programmers learn from it and add to it.  Who owns it, well
>CrossCheck paid for it, no one programmer wrote it and I like to push it to
>the public domain.  I say no one owns it.

As long as there are no other agreements to the contrary or proprietary or 
trade secrets involved, and the code is generic, I agree with Chris. I have 
and will continue to do the same thing. My working relationship with 
employers and clients alike has always been one where it is understood that 
I will do whatever is humanly possible to get the job done, they will treat 
me reasonably well, and we will let the lawyers fight the buzzards for the 
scraps somewhere else. I know it's not the way things work, but it's the 
way I live, and I refuse to do otherwise. So far, my experience has been 
that if you attempt to deal honorably with people, they will usually return 
the favor, and if they don't, you should stop dealing with them. Of course, 
a little pragmatism doesn't hurt either...


Pete Hall
pbhall@execpc.com
http://www.execpc.com/~pbhall
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