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>If I as a developer want to license my code a certain way (and enforce that license in a certain way) what authority do these lawyers have to tell me I'm "stupid".

Are you willing to represent yourself in court? If the answer is no, then that's an admission you are stupider than a lawyer when it comes to legal matters. Nothing wrong with it, I have no problem admitting it myself. Let the programmers handle the programming and let the lawyers handle the law.

discuss

onphonenow|3 years ago

I'd skip the name calling.

You fail to understand how copyright works. If I'm the creator of the work, I have the copyright to it.

And yes, I'd be happy to represent myself if SFC came along and told me I could or couldn't do something with the code I wrote because that makes no sense. I can choose a license, I can dual license, I can re-license future releases and I can stop providing updates under any of those licenses.

So sure, if you and the SFC want to go after me for my code, go for it.

There seems to be a modern confusion that the folks NOT doing any of the work in writing code have all sorts of rights with respect to it (or time of a dev to fix their bugs). False.

throwaway82652|3 years ago

There's no name calling, "stupid" is the exact word you used. I'm stupider than a lawyer when it comes to all the details of contract law, because I didn't study it as much as they do. If you aren't a lawyer, then you probably are too. Again, nothing wrong with admitting it. You and I can't know everything. It's actually arrogant and insulting to claim that you know more than a skilled lawyer or attorney just because you wrote some code, I would suggest not doing that.

>There seems to be a modern confusion that the folks NOT doing any of the work in writing code have all sorts of rights with respect to it (or time of a dev to fix their bugs). False.

I'm sorry but this makes no sense, it's weird how often I see this sentiment in open source. If you hired a lawyer to represent you and give you legal advice and defend you and court (which is multiple full time jobs) then you're paying them to do a job for you. You're not giving any of your rights away. You don't have to choose to hire SF Conservancy, you can hire another firm.

jcranmer|3 years ago

> If I'm the creator of the work, I have the copyright to it.

Not necessarily. For example, work for hire, or copyright being assigned to the employer. Or maybe the work itself isn't copyrightable in the first place. There's even a fun provision where US government work doesn't have any copyright in the first place! You might also have transferred the copyright of your work after you created it in a way which doesn't give you any retained rights.

mistrial9|3 years ago

in the USA there is strong copyright for the author of the work in question. Work-for-hire is well understood in Chapter 1 of any book on that topic. Secondly, a court appearance is not required to be an author and therefore copyright holder. Suggestions that "if you are not able to make a court appearance then XYZ and etc" .. is fallacious to start with, condescending and sounds a lot like an attorney arrogance. NOLO Press, read my lips