Re:Ask HN, again: Do Companies Exploit Open Source And Progr...
by lhorie on Friday July 17, 2009 @08:33AM
(#709736)
Are programmers are plagiarists?
Generalization. Some will happily copy and paste stuff whenever they can, which technically is plagiarism for the particular snippet. Using something that was given out for free, or reading that code and reusing the same ideas / patterns / code style / algorithm / whatever for something bigger and different isn't necessarily plagiarism.
As the saying goes, "copy one person, it's plagiarism, copy many people, it's reasearch".
I'd say that the part of the blame on the ordeal of not getting paid for your free work is that most open source projects don't make any effort to say that they want money (assuming they do).
The only example of someone doing that off the top of my head (I'm sure there are others) is Jack Slocum's Ext. He had a commercial license from day one and his site clearly explains who it applies to.
Complaining on a blog that people may or may not read / care about / agree with isn't exactly legally binding (or whatever the correct term is) and it doesn't inspire enough professionalism (for me anyways) to feel comfortable doing business with.
Generalization. Some will happily copy and paste stuff whenever they can, which technically is plagiarism for the particular snippet. Using something that was given out for free, or reading that code and reusing the same ideas / patterns / code style / algorithm / whatever for something bigger and different isn't necessarily plagiarism.
As the saying goes, "copy one person, it's plagiarism, copy many people, it's reasearch".
I'd say that the part of the blame on the ordeal of not getting paid for your free work is that most open source projects don't make any effort to say that they want money (assuming they do).
The only example of someone doing that off the top of my head (I'm sure there are others) is Jack Slocum's Ext. He had a commercial license from day one and his site clearly explains who it applies to.
Complaining on a blog that people may or may not read / care about / agree with isn't exactly legally binding (or whatever the correct term is) and it doesn't inspire enough professionalism (for me anyways) to feel comfortable doing business with.