Here is my take on it...

1) there is no contract... only by handshake, or whatever... in this case, ownership is by possession. if you have the program, you own it. if you did not have the program, then you would have no right to it - cases like this usually default to entertainment law, without a contract, ownership goes to the author. there is an outside chance that the author could sue for unfair usage, but any programmer worth his salt would not bother as there is not 100% chance that he could prove in court and not worth attorney fees.

2) if the programmer wanted to keep this property controlled, he would have had to have had a contract that specified software was to be used for a single and specific installation.

3) it would be courteous to inform him of your use of the material, if not for permission, to at least give him / his company fair notice of your activity (which is legal and by ethical, because there is no promise being broken here).

I think this is a complex issue but these types of statements I strongly disagree with:


WRONG! If you pay an architect to design a house for you and he gives you a set of plans that does not mean you have the right to copy that house and have it rebuilt elsewhere and it sure as hell does not mean you have the right to resell the design because you paid for it!!!

I think there are a ton of issues at hand here but in a nutshell I personally have no problem with people looking at that program and learning from it. But copying it and pasting from it? ***BAD***

Where's Alan?

It's the same with commercial photography . I still own the shot even though the client paid me to shoot it . What they are paying for is usage of that photo . There are different types of usage: (in ascending fee order) catalog, trade ad, regional ad and national ad . If I am paid for a shot to be used in a catalog (usually least expensive fee ) and it's then used in a national ad without compensating me for that usage, I can sue for a lot more than if I was paid to begin with .

The only way the client completely owns the shot is if they get me to sign a "Worldwide Total Buyout" . And I never sign those . :)

If you were on their payroll when you took that photo and it was a photo they asked you to take, then they would own it.
If someone on my payroll was asked to find a solution to a problem and in doing so they invented a product, that product would belong to my company.

Bill Gates hired the people who created Windows, he owns all rights to it, the programers who created it don't and neither do purchasers who buy a copy.

Which has exactly 0 to do with the situation at hand because he (the photographer nor the programmer under discussion in this thread) was not on their payroll! The programmer did NOT work for the company. He was paid by the company to provide something for them and I'd guess he was paid to supply it to them for A (ONE) PROJECT. Taking that and copying and pasting it WITHOUT PERMISSION and reusing it again and again on other projects is illegal at worst and questionable at best.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's all black and white but this continuing suggestion that "they paid for it and it's theirs" is just not factual nor is the suggestion that he was "working for them".

Exactly, thanks QQQ .
Even though I'm in a different industry, I used it as an example because often copyright issues are similar in other industries .

And that by the way is the heart of it. Common sense dictates that this was an agreement to provide programming for a project, NOT a contract to provide code that could be resused again and again. The thread starter stated so. And while it may be tempting, even almost irresitably tempting to reuse that code again and again, it would be best to obtain the programmers permission to do so or to have negotiated that as part of the contract.

A good example of a couple of different instances is the Crestron modules provided by ControlWorks or the graphics templates provided by GUIFX. They state quite openly as part of the sales agreement that the purchaser is free to use them again and again on as many jobs as they like.

That by the way is not *necessarily* true either. It would depend entirely on the contractual agreement. For instance, I might pay Pinnanfarina to design a product for me and there could put all types of stipulations in the contract affecting both sides. I might only be able to sell it in certain parts of the world. They might be able to revoke the use of their name under certain situations. And so forth.

Fritz, I think your even asking these questions is admirable. That said, do guidelines really need to have been drawn up to know what was intended? You wouldn't have even started the thread if you didn't know that there was obviously an implicit understanding here. Obviously the more that is put in writing the better, but the fact that there was not something defined does not equal what some here are suggesting.

I have never really put that much thought into this since we have never used an outside programmer. However, since I have killed and welded into a 55 gallon barrel then dumped into a river in Georgia (my former programmer and ex partner) I will possibly have to consider these issues further.

Could you clarify your stand here? This is on the first point, and I didn't leave out a single word.


Clear so far: the possessor owns it.


Whoops! In the same argument, the author now owns it...


Now the author probably doesn't own it....

Definitely not black and white. I am a Crestron programmer and have seen many programs written by others. Due to the Crestron constructs most programs turn out pretty similar. I have seen a few unique ways of doing things that I made a mental note to use in some of my programs much like a music composer might use a particular harmony or chord progression. I don't know about directly cutting and pasting lines of code, but if you sell a programmer a program it is hard to tell them not to imitate it and certainly much harder to prove. I'm also a C programmer and we use other peoples' bubble sort and comparison sub-routines all the time. Some of this stuff is just public domain.

QQQ asked for my opinion so I'm resurecting this thread. I am in a strange position in that I own my own company and perform my own installations. I also find myself hired as either consultant and/or programmer by other firms. As the other programmers have commented when I am on an other company's job I work for them and do things their way, although I may put in my two cents worth of commen sense. When they have a problem I use my resources to help solve the problem. If that means I need to call in a favor from a Network guru or get some manufacturer on site, or obtain product quickly I'll do it. If I need to pull an all nighter to get the job done I'll go it even though I earn no additional monies for performing this above and beyond task.

Tim has summed up the legal position, I think, correctly. But I believe this is more than a mere legal matter or this thread would not have been started. I agree with the programmers above who have concluded that it is unethical to pay someone to program a specific project and then use his work on other projects without specific concent. Had you copied a specific bit of code, say a conditional or some means of generating volume commands in RS-232 I doubt anyone would have a problem. But coping and pasting whole chunks of code to use on other jobs is unfair and unethical.

I have taught individuals to program. I wrote code examples for them to learn. When I program commerical jobs where I must give up the source code I use the most pedestrian code possible. The issue is not can you take the concept of Interlock, Or , buffer mv and reuse it. Recently someone sent me a macro. They gave it for my use but specifically asked that I not pass it on to anyone else. If I've understood this situation nothing was stipulated other than here is code for a job and payment for that job was made. As it was never stated by the poster that they intended to reuse the code they in a sense have driven a truck through a tiny loop hole. I have heard that this has been done by universities. Hier a programmer to do one system and then reproduce the exact same system in lots of other rooms and load that code in. The programmer was hired to do a specific job and that job has been reproduced without his being compensated as he should. This is not exactly the case here but his work is being reproduced in large chunks so that you can perform the same task on other jobs that he might have been legitemately suspected he would be hired to code. If you want to learn to code pull apart Crestron macros and then write your own. No one is going to sue you but, as tomorrow is Yom Kippur, were you Jewish you would need to ask forgiveness from that programmer for screwing him to ensure your moving iinto the new year with a clean conscience. It may not be illegal, if it's not unethical its certainly smarmy and it is to my mind petty larceny.

Alan