Comment on Skyblivion team says former volunteer is threatening to sue over code dispute
veniasilente@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
The very fact that a threat to sue was possible and that the team preferred to roll back / remove the code indicates the situation was not legally clear cut when the code was submitted in the first place. And, come on, this was solved in the 90s!
Did the submitter sign a legal document, backed by the project, to waive their rights and ownership of the code to the project specifically? If so, this is done. If not, this is done too.
Goodeye8@piefed.social 1 day ago
I doubt it’s as simple as you make it out to be. For starters you’re only looking at it from the perspective of the project. Does the project have any legal framework to own whatever was submitted to the project? But you also have to look at it from the perspective of the submitter. Do they have any framework that states how their work can be used? If the answer to either question is “yes” this is as simple as you state. But if the answer to both is “no” then we’re in sort of a legal gray area because neither side has any explicit legal ground.
Personally I think the fact that the submitter willingly gave the project the code to use makes it fall under an implicit license which lets the project use the code for its intended purpose. All the project did was maintenance on the code (which required decompilation of the code, which to my knowledge is not illegal unless explicitly stated) so it would continue working as intended.
It’s hard to come up with a real world analogy for something that can be copied infinite amount of times, so it’s a bit shoddy but here goes. If I give you an axe to break logs and I tell you nothing about how you can use the axe. The handle breaks and you replace the handle so you could continue using the axe. Do you think there’s a case for me to sue you for replacing the handle on the axe I gave you to use? And now consider the possibility that I was able to give away a perfect copy of the axe and the handle got replaced on the copy not the original. My axe works just fine, you simply made sure your copy of my axe also continues to work.
veniasilente@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Nope. In the absence of any explicit legal statement to the contrary, the explicit implicit stature is that you own the copyright of that which you create.
Goodeye8@piefed.social 1 day ago
Owning the copyright of something and giving that something away (copyrighted or not) are two different things. My point was in regards to the latter. If they gave away their copyrighted thing without saying anything about how the receiver can use said copyrighted thing then what is there to enforce? It’s not like he told them he can take back the permission to use his code at any time and they’re obligated to no longer use said code. He can’t retroactively say him taking away his permission to use his code also means they’re no longer allowed to use what he had given.
veniasilente@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Nothing. Exactly.
Which is why I was always stressing the points that this was easily foldable if there was a paper trail / project consensus on how to operate. Now, if there is none of the above, then the legal expectation is to fall back to defaults:
Did they “gave away”? Or did they merely contribute it? Two different things.
“Silence obligues”, in which case it means “the fallback applies which is a) I retain the copyright if there was no CLA signed that waived my rights or b) you retain the rights if there was such a waiver of rights”. Ez pz.
He wouldn’t need to, is the point.
Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 1 day ago
That’s actually a really awesome metaphor! I was quite impressed with that.
And I think you nailed down the issue pretty well, if there’s already some legal agreement, this has to be judged with that in mind. If there’s no prior legal agreement, then we’re going to have to use some common sense. And common sense says that you did willingly give this to someone with the intent for them to use it, so yeah, they’re using it…