State Trooper Fights For His Source Code 440
BarneyRabble writes to tell us that a Wisconsin State Trooper is fighting to maintain control of the source code for a program he wrote that helps officers write traffic tickets electronically. Praised by the state just 18 months ago, Trooper David Meredith is now suing the head of patrol claiming that the state is trying to illegally seize the source that he had developed on his own time. From the article: "Meredith, of Oconto Falls, defied an order from his bosses to relinquish the source code - the heart of the program - in October and instead deposited it with Dane County Circuit Judge David T. Flanagan, pending a ruling on who should control it. The case centers on how the software was developed. Department of Transportation attorney Mike Kernats said the State Patrol - a division of DOT - provided Meredith with a computer to write the software and gave him time off patrol duties so he could do the work. But Meredith said in court filings that he spent hundreds of hours off duty working on it, developing it almost entirely on his own time. He noted that he never signed a software licensing agreement."
Resources (Score:5, Interesting)
Would that affect the case?
Re:Resources (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Resources (Score:5, Interesting)
My understanding is that there were some legal challenges to that, but the main thing was that they essentially killed the golden goose. Lotus was (and still is, in it's present incarnation as "Notes" under IBM) a great system, with amazing flexibility. A lot of people swear by it, using it to run just about everything in their business. But that sort aggressive licensing took a lot of wind out of L123's sales--pun intended--and other companies were ready to fill the void, turning it into an also-ran.
Re:Resources (Score:5, Funny)
Let me fix that for you.
A lot of people swear at it
There, thats better
Re:Resources (Score:5, Funny)
Your sig: My info page is filling up with rejected posts. How can I purge these?
The real problem is that you obviously don't know how submit stories the "slashdot way." Here are some basic tips for submitting stories:
1. Never submit an original or timely story.
Instead please submit week-old stories from CNet News [com.com].
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While in normal circumstances this would be unacceptable, it is considered l33t on Slashdot.
3. Always pander to the liberal, anti-MS, or anti-digital rights sycophants on Slashdot with an absurd political statement in the guise of a question.
Example: "Given the fact that the format issues with high-definition optical disks have yet to be worked out, how can we foil further assaults on our Constitutional rights by George Bush?
4. Submit stories that are as polarizing as possible.
Example title: Totally Unknown and Unqualified Blogger Says Linux is Better Than Mac.
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MOD PARENT UP (Score:5, Funny)
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:5, Funny)
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a GNU.
someone else has seen into the heart of slashdot
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Resources (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Resources (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Resources (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Resources (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Resources (Score:5, Insightful)
In addition, even if he got permission from his supervisors to develop whatever, whenever and he would have right to it, doesn't mean this is the case. It is unlikely that his supervisors have authorization to give this permission and/or to make capital purchases. Those decisions would have been made at a higher level.
Re:Resources (Score:5, Informative)
In CA (as has been mentioned MANY times before on slashdot) there is a specific law stating that what is developed by an employee on the employee's own time belongs to the employee as long as there was no company resources were used. The officer wouldn't be able to claim that as described by the officer even in a state that has such specific provisions in their own state codes.
I wish him luck - but I suspect the state is going to win this one.
Federal Law (Score:5, Interesting)
The officer is wrong on one point: this is a matter for Federal law. (The very same issue is why Novell was able to move SCO vs. Novell from Utah court to Federal Court.)
Federal law controls on copyight matters, overiding both state law and whatever contract he was (forced to) sign. And Federal law says that the program is his, and not the State of Wisconsin's, unless either (a) it was produced during the normal course of his working day; or (b) it was specifically commissioned in writing; or else (c) there is a signed written specific instrument of conveyance (US Code Title 17, Chapter 1 Section 101 and Chapter 2 Section 204).
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His employer gave him time and equipment to create a ticket writing system... However because he was passionate about his work (like many of you may be) he took his work home and continued to work on it on off hours to meet his deadlines.
There was his mistake. He should have left his work at work and instead went home and worked on a seperate problem that they needed to solve. Then he could have gone in and said "Hey, see how great this ticket system is I built you on your time..
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If that were the only thing their claim to the source code was based on, the likely outcome is that it would ONLY prevent him from selling it or disclosing it to anyone else (besides the DOT). It would NOT mean that they own the source.
It's a gray area - especially if he was provided a computer and time off to develop some/all of the code. Personally, I would have offered to turn over the code a
Head Asplode... (Score:5, Funny)
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They usually either assume that development time will be 0, pull a number from their arse, or ask a developer, listen attentively while the developer gives them a reasonable quote and then pull a number from their arse.
Re:Head Asplode... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Head Asplode... (Score:5, Insightful)
You never hear any of them suggesting the government do a study or a trial to see if our speed limits could safely be higher.
Re:Head Asplode... (Score:4, Insightful)
Studies... (Score:3, Insightful)
It is in fact well established in the civil engineering literature how to set speed limits so as to make the roads as safe as possible. However, it is also clear that speed limit setting is a matter of politics, not engineering.
I think it should be actionable for speed limits to be set this way (i.e., I think politicians should be liable in court for putting politics above engineering in matters of public safety. "Sovreig
Humans aren't machines (Score:3, Insightful)
On engineering terms it would be fine for some roads in the middle of towns to be set at 100mph because many cars are engineered well enough to keep on those roads and turn off those roads under control going up to that speed.
But people aren't machines. Small children will run after their ball into the road, and 100mph cars and small children don't mix. So despite what the cars and roads are technically capable of, peop
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A better system would be to have a base
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Having a speed limit of 25 mph in a residential area where kids are always out playing? Great idea, and I say "enforce the hell out of it". Limiting people to 70 mph on a highway that can safely handle traffic at 90 mph? Unreasonable, but good luc
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The purpose of the law.... (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the best discussions presented on the subject of law is Frederick Bastiat's "The Law"
His book is presented primarily in the form of Natural Law, which is the fundemental principles our country was founded upon. One of my favorite statements from this book follows:
Re:The purpose of the law.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Have you ever paused to think about what Wal-Mart's business practices do to American businesses (I am guessing you are in the US since they do most of their business there)? Wal-Mart does a great job of driving wages down, and doesn't pay its employees anywhere near enough and overprices health care, thus causing a lot of Wal-Mart employees to use state-funded h
Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Funny)
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It's like a million lines of source cried out and were instantly silenced...
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the take-away point (Score:2)
Re:the take-away point (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:the take-away point (Score:5, Insightful)
* Write a little bit
* Go to your boss and say "I'll write the rest if you allow it to be Free Software"
* Get that in writing
* Be prepared to say "good luck getting someone else to finish the project" as you walk away
Re:the take-away point (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, try it like this: (The American Way)
God bless MLK, I got the day off.
I work as a contractor for the DOD. A few years ago, a government employee did that. He was the boss of the shop, developed a cool DB system. Quit. Opened his shop, sold his system. Profit.
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If it's anything like where I work, the cops think they can do anything and get away with it. Typically, they are quite right; They have done anything and gotten away with it. So it wouldn't surprise me in the least if he thought he'd be able to just coast on through this with that mentality.
the suspence is killing me (Score:3, Funny)
Re:the suspense is killing me (Score:3, Insightful)
I expect the GPL-supporters to take the cop's side. GPL supporters are big on copyright, since copyright is the only thing that gives them any leverage to ask a business to align with them politically in order to use the software they indulge themselves in the illusion of offering "freely". If not for copyright, such "freely" given software would be possible to use freely. The same is true in the case of the cop. So, actually, I see quite a bit of suspense: I
He didn't sign any agreement... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:He didn't sign any agreement... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:He didn't sign any agreement... (Score:4, Interesting)
Nor is it that simple either. A key word here is "scope." One important test is whether or not the employer is in business to create such works. So, a programmer employed by a software house and writing software is probably creating a work for hire. But the police are not in the business of creating software. So, even when provided resources and paid time to do the work, it does not necessarily follow that the result is a work for hire.
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Not having a signed agreement does not make the code his. He was given time from work to write it and used his employer's computer. Therefore the code might be theirs.
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To put it another way, not everything you do at work is anything to do with them. Nor should it be.
Basically if you write something at work without them asking or anything the worst that should happen is you are disciplined for slacking off.
Well... not all of it. (Score:5, Insightful)
A fair solution would be the officer gives the rights to his employer, and his employer gives him a nice bonus for overtime work ($10,000-$20,000, depending on the amount of time he spent and the quality of the changes he made). If I were him I'd try to settle out of court.
Work Fore Hire (Score:2)
He is now in the whole "work for hire" category. If he has adequatly spepeated out the code he did at work, from the code that was done at home, he may be able to give them a partial load. But I'm assuming that the effort was less formal than that.
The source code agreement isnt
Re:He didn't sign any agreement... (Score:5, Informative)
He MAY be able to recover pay (even overtime) if he can show his superiors knew or should have known about the time he spent on it. I can't see him getting anything else. He's never going to be making millions off that software.
He could always destroy the source code instead of giving it to the state... and risk being sent to jail for a computer crime.
The minute they... (Score:5, Interesting)
My boss is very liberal about what we do in the IT department as long as things are running smoothly and we get long term projects done on time. But even here I am careful to keep anything I might potentially think of as mine at home and off company equipment.
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A contract is just a piece of paper until you are in court
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A contract does not necessarily need a piece of paper... but it helps... a lot. He was given time off work and a computer to work on this program by his employers. From the article we are given to understand that this is the only reason he received these things. So they were expecting a program. That is, he was working for them when he wrote the program. So he couldn't get it all done during work hours, or he wanted to do more. It was still for work (the fact they gave him time off to do this AND a com
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(P.S. I am not a programer or developer, and clerical workers sign the same agreement)
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Not always that easy. Sometimes you start with a module or app that over a period of time with incremental improvements, winds up turning into a commercially viable product. A good corporation will reward such an effort either with a sizable cash reward or making the developer a product lead with his/her own development staff. Unfortunately, this
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I think that's the most important point. I work in software, so I have to check the IP clauses in any employment contract carefully. I regard employers claiming rights to the following as fair:
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At my current position,the IP clause included anything I develop during my employment, work related or not.
I explained that I have no problem with assigning work-related stuff to them, but non-work related, on my machine, on my own computer should be mine.
They agreed, we lined out the relevant clauses and initialed them.
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However, if his employment contract does contain a work for hire clause, then he screwed h
*Aways* document it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Give it to the government! (Score:3, Funny)
Tracs (Score:4, Insightful)
FYI... (Score:5, Interesting)
2) Accepting a work computer and other considerations has *got* to seriously jeopardize his claim. For heaven's sake, do *not* accept anything like that for work which you want to own, unless you get explicit acknowledgment that your employer sees it the same way.
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Why? (Score:2)
If this guy spent any time at work on this thing, or had time off work to specifically work on the project - which he himself seems to be saying is true - then he's screwed. Whether he signed a specific licensing agreement or not, most contracts will state that any work done on company time belongs to the compa
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Assuming this is true - please site reference - you pretty much invalidate it because you don't know this about Wisconsin.
It is standard practice in the IT industry to sign an agreement that any work you create as part of your employment is the property of
This is a good one... (Score:2, Interesting)
He should have had written permission to write the code on his own and plug it into the state's system for testing or use.
Both messed up, and I am not sure that there isn't some comeback on the origin of the source before he modified it. If license was on the basis of non-commercial use, he probably can't sell it.
On the bright side, with this kind of publicity,
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Licensing (Score:4, Insightful)
The article says:
However, it goes on to state:
If he did indeed base his work off another piece of software (that was given to him on the condition that he not sell it commercially), then I don't think he really has a leg to stand on.
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If I write a word processor that interacts with a printer driver, I'm not basing my work on the printer driver.
The Cheese Head State may have a case.... (Score:2)
They will likely argue "Work for Hire" status of the work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire [wikipedia.org]
RTFA? (Score:2, Informative)
I'm amazed they're using his software (Score:5, Insightful)
The police force should have never accepted the program without accompanying source code, or (worst case) some sort of license.
-B
The code belongs to his employer. (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, in most cases if the work is any any way related to his work domain it's theirs even if they _didn't_ provide any resources, or at least they have a strong case to argue this.
He's wasting his time and the court's time, he can't win.
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As for what you think, it's irrelevant. Case law disagrees with you.
Standard Operating Procedure (Score:3, Informative)
1. Body of Employee Law
Since most employer/employee law leaves no room for interpreting "spare time" vs. "work time" other than how much money you have to lawyer-up he'll lose on this one because he'll run out of money defending his position.
2. Body of State/Fed Law
I know the Feds have a policy whereby they own the source on things written for them. It would not surprise me to hear this used as the "authority" whereby the code is taken.
What's sad is the guy has committed career suicide at this point and, if he hasn't already blown a bunch of money lawyering-up for the pricipal/principal(sp?) that this is his code.
Developers please note: This kind of theft of useful code/ideas is SOP in public service. If you have a great idea, develop it on your own time and find a completely unrelated avenue to promoting it. GPL is one way to go about this.
Re:Also... (Score:2)
Consider this scenario...someone decides to work in a sweat-equity arrangement, whereby he creates a tangible and functional piece of software in exchange for future interest. He by default owns the copyright, since there are no work-for-hire issues (i.e. no compensation is involved). Despite ownership of the copyright, it's entirely conceivable that the code could be rendered useless if someone else patents any of ideas used in the software. (Whether they merit patenting is another is
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But really, let's look at this from a semi-objective viewpoint.
Now, I realize he'd really like to
Not as bad as it 1st sounds, still messy though (Score:4, Interesting)
In 2003, the state sent Meredith to Iowa to get trained on the Iowa Department of Transportation's Traffic and Criminal Software, or TraCS. Iowa gave Wisconsin the software for free on the condition that Wisconsin not develop the application for commercial purposes, said Kernats.
At the request of his superiors, Meredith tweaked the program so that it would work in Wisconsin and created a way to import driver information and criminal histories into it. The software that imports data saves time and prevents errors, said Jones, the union president
Dang, on the one hand he's praised for going beyond call of duty (great game too) and on the other he was assigned to the project by his bosses.
This Trooper isn't a programmer first, he's a cop, who does cop things like write speeding tickets (over 2k a year FTA).
He screwed up by doing what his bosses asked him to do without having paper in place to cover what would happen to his work.
They screwed up by asking a non-programmer (I sure he is a code wizard but he was hired to be cop first) to do something beyond their job description using personal skills and ultimately personal time.
Interesting enough, if I read it right, if the State gets control of the modified software, they won't be selling it for commercial gain, whereas it seems Mr Meredith is interested in making money off of his work, fair, but Iowa originally provided the software with a clause preventing that.
Grasping? (Score:4, Interesting)
The fact that he did it off the clock hardly seems like his boss' fault.
If I had to pick based on that info, well, he'd need to turn over his code. Regardless you can be sure that neither party will make these mistakes again.
Always clear this with your boss... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/university.html [gnu.org]
I work for a university, and I have explicitly talked to both the senior programmer and to our boss about developing FOSS on my own time (Do it both in person and over email -- so you have a record of the conversation).
If you write computer code and want to make sure that your company/university does not try to take it from you, you need to have that conversation. Send an email today!
Overtime? (Score:2)
This is a union job. Different rules. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a unionized job. So there's a union contract [wseu-24.org] in effect.
There's no intellectual property clause in that union contract. But there's an overtime clause, which provides for time and a half for overtime and includes the line "Implementation of alternative work patterns or any variation thereof shall be by mutual agreement between the Employer and the Union." That says "Employer and the Union", not "Employer and the Employee", as is standard in labor contracts. Any special deals on hours have to be done through the union. This prevents the employer from pressuring employees individually. Any special arrangements about working at home have to be cleared with the union, and, of course, that's paid time.
"Work for Hire" is a very explicit thing in a union job. The company does not own your life outside work.
Unions - the people who brought you the weekend.
Poor b@stard! (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, they might also abuse "eminent domain" for his code. I wish I were joking.
No evidence he was off the clock (Score:3, Interesting)
The article is pretty vague about whether or not the code is a derived work of Iowa's TraCS, so let's assume it's not, since if it is, the case is extremely uninteresting.
In favor of the state:
It might be worth asking: how did the state obtain a copy of the program? If he admits there was no licensing agreement, then it sounds like he either developed it in-house, or he sold a copy of the binary to them. Or is he claiming he sold them a copy of the binary for $0 (a gift)?
That's ridiculous, and is in no way evidence that he did the work on his own time. A cop can write more tickets just by being an asshole. Time may be one variable in number of tickets, but attitude and contempt for the public can easily overcome that. Or, to put it more charitably, maybe he's a high-performing cop, very good at his job.
(BTW, the whole idea of whether or not writing code was within the scope of his duties is pretty alien to me, I guess because all my experience is with small companies. To me, anything an employer asks me to do is within the scope of my duties; the very idea of job descriptions (i.e. cop vs programmer) ever being the slightest bit relevant, is very weird to me. But I know it's a big world and different people have different types of employer relationships.)
The fact he had a state computer at home, is very bad for his case.
To tell the truth, though, I have a lot of sympathy for the guy. I suspect that what happened, is that he really was told to write the program in the line of duty, and he did so. Then, at some point, he got personally interested in the project, and gave of himself. Programming can be like that, and there have been numerous times that some problem that came up on the job, made me start thinking off the job. He probably did do some work (probably a lot) off the clock, because it's enjoyable. But how the hell do you separate the off-the-clock work from on-the-clock work, when it's the same kind of work? It's impossible. What's he going to do, turn in 42% of the source code? What a crappy situation. It's a shame he didn't do something totally unrelated to law enforcement, as his hobby. (Ah, but there's the rub: he wouldn't have expertise with the problem as a user. A cop knows what a cop needs.)
A link and a headache (Score:3, Informative)
I suspect the officer doesn't have a legal leg to stand on--but answering that question is going to require a peek at his employment contract, the work that was done, the other compensation or tools provided: in short, it's going to require lawyers and courts and judges to sort it out. Which is, sadly, the primary reason why we have lawyers, courts and judges.
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Re:and all I can think of is... (Score:4, Funny)
In this case, it's "What cha gonna do when they code for you?"