Stealing code ;-(

Published Mon, Jul 3 2006 23:45 | William

I don't know why I even let it bother me but a lot of times is still does.  Usually starts out with me working on something, an article, a book, a newsgroup question.  I start searching around and use words that I think describe what I'm looking for.  Low and behold, there's an article on X.  Great.  Click through, start reading it and then realize  Cuckoo c = new Cuckoo(); or some other code looks really familiar.  Look up at the site - nope, not mine.  Look at the author - nope, not me.  Look for credit, nope, none given.  Look at the variable names or namespaces, "Gee, this guy decided to use KDN.xxxx as a namespace.  I use KDN for KnowDotNet - small world I guess." except that it is my code.  Then I start wondering, did I give anyone permisson?  If anyone asks I'm normally ok with it but if I wrote it, I'd probably at least have asked for some credit.

Then being a grown up kicks in.  Putting code samples on the net means some folks are going to take it and use it which is what it was up there for in the first place. But others are going to take it and try to take credit for it.  It's life. Get over it.  Quit whining.  Write a blog post about it if you must and then shut up about it - you're too old to snivel, particularly about something like this.  Then I go back to what I was doing....

Comments

# Andy said on July 3, 2006 7:49 PM:

Quitcherbitchin :) It could be worse you could have a psycho ex and have people stealing your code. Oh wait that's my life..... ;)


Shoot me an e-mail with your schedule for when you are coming down to my house and such so I can make plans for stuff for us to do the weekend you are here.

# Brian Madsen said on July 5, 2006 7:53 AM:

damn..Andy's organised!!! a plan?? around Bill?? g'darn!! what else is new in this world of ours?

# Monika said on July 5, 2006 11:08 AM:

Whenever I'm asked to evaluate a demo disk for an MFC position, the first thing I do is look at the about dialog.  If I see a book publisher as the author, that's the end of the demo for me.  And that happens with surprising frequency.

# Greg Young said on August 16, 2006 6:15 PM:

You found my website?

Seriously though its all too common. The one that eats at me is with newsgroups/forums where people will copy/paste your entire reply to to a similar question and take your name off + place theirs on instead of just linking to it.

# Keith Rull said on August 21, 2006 4:39 PM:

it's funny.. i saw one of my code listed on somebodys website... he even forgot to remove my name on the namespace(i usually name demos as KeithRull.XXXXXX).

i think everybody should give credit where credit is due...

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