Code ownership

[ddanbe]

Not that important, but just a question that pops up.
Does the code we post here has any legal ownership?
Does it still belong to the OP or is it DaniWeb's or has it become open source?

[veedeoo]

Good question. Some of the codes I posted here on Daniweb made it to Github and github members were very kind in asking my permission.

[Ancient Dragon]

Posts contributed to the community immediately become the property of DaniWeb upon submission.

See this link

[Hiroshe]

"Posts contributed to the community immediately become the property of DaniWeb upon submission" is a little ambiguous, because it doesn't say how the content is licensed. I.e. what are readers allowed to do with content they see on daniweb? Is it licenced as the original author has licensed it as? Is there restrictions on how it can be licenced? Or is it assumed to be under public domain, and daniweb merly 'owns the right to host' the content?

That paragraph goes on to talk about how a post cannot be deleted, so I feel like that implies that daniweb 'own the right to host' the content. This would be to prevent people from trying to legally urge daniweb to remove content that the author wanted to revoke. It still leaves the question of, what are readers allowed to do with the content.

It's probably safer and nicer to ask the author, unless she made a note that it's freely distributable.

[Ancient Dragon]

Of course I can not speak for Ms Dani, but as I recall her comments on this topic in the past is that she has no intent to restrict what the authors can do with the code they post, such as use it in work or schoolwork projects, it's just that DaniWeb owns the rights to the discussions about the code.

As for deleting posts -- it's DaniWeb policy not to delete a post/thread unless it violates one or more Rules. One reason for that is to avoid disrupting the continuity of the discussion in the thread. The poster can always ask a moderator to modify the contents of a post and remove personal information, such as real names. It is the poster's responsibility to ensure a post does not violate the policy of others, such as schools and companies the poster works for. If you post something that violated school or company rules, that's the poster's problem not DaniWeb's. DaniWeb is not responsible for such actions and will normally not delete a thread/post because of it. In a nutshell, it's the poster' problem, not DaniWeb's.

[deceptikon]

This would be to prevent people from trying to legally urge daniweb to remove content that the author wanted to revoke.

Pretty much. The only pressure we tend to receive as concerns deletions is from schools and students. And the answer is always the same: members who post in violation of their school's policy do so at their own risk and their posts will not be removed at either their or their schools behest unless the post breaks one of our rules such that deletion is warranted.

It's probably safer and nicer to ask the author

That's the best approach as a simple courtesy to the author. I'll let Dani chime in with the full licensing stuff, but unofficially it's safe to assume that Daniweb won't seek legal action for using code you find on the forums in proprietary software. On top of being irrationally difficult to enforce, we're simply not that neurotic.

[Dani]

The reason for our policy is to retain full exclusive rights to be able to do whatever we want with anything posted on DaniWeb. This means we have a legal leg to stand on if someone duplicates all of our content en masse and we wanted to prosecute because it was hurting our business. This means that our moderation team can modify content at its discretion. This means that we can choose or not choose to delete content. And this means that, should I ever sell DaniWeb in the future (no plans to, mind you), I would have the legal right to be selling our entire database of content, for new owners to do whatever they wanted with. They could choose to publish every post in a hardcover book if they so desired. Whatever. (Otherwise all DaniWeb LLC would have to its name is the platform and mailing list.) For the most part this is just me trying to protect myself by giving DaniWeb LLC freedom to explore avenues in the future without being restricted by copyright and licensing issues.