mattyod
02-25-2005, 10:41 AM
I figure this is the best place to post this.
I was just wondering about how far you guys think it is appropriate to go with acreditation and at what point code becomes "new"?
I just want to point out that I have no problem giving acreditation to other people in the source code of my site & I believe that it should be done wherever possible. But let me explain what I am getting at here with an example.
Recently I found and stole/borrowed a peice of code from someone who thanked someone else for "the idea" in their source code. So obviously this person has already adapted someone elses idea.
Now I then start to adapt that code for my own purposes and run into some problems. So I find yet another similar peice of code from someone else entirely and start mashing the two together to get what I need.
Finally I run into one more problem and bring the code here where a very helpful person rewrites a significant part of it and at last I get what I need. I will then have to make further adaptations to this code to develop the site further.
OK if you are still with me do you see my problem? I have effectively got three levels of assistance in this code and have had influences from four seperate people (excluding myself). The code is also largely unrecognisable from what I started with.
Where would you draw the line? I want to give proper acreditation but should I be writing an essay to list all contributors, which might just confuse the reader anyway?
Would love to hear your thoughts :)
I was just wondering about how far you guys think it is appropriate to go with acreditation and at what point code becomes "new"?
I just want to point out that I have no problem giving acreditation to other people in the source code of my site & I believe that it should be done wherever possible. But let me explain what I am getting at here with an example.
Recently I found and stole/borrowed a peice of code from someone who thanked someone else for "the idea" in their source code. So obviously this person has already adapted someone elses idea.
Now I then start to adapt that code for my own purposes and run into some problems. So I find yet another similar peice of code from someone else entirely and start mashing the two together to get what I need.
Finally I run into one more problem and bring the code here where a very helpful person rewrites a significant part of it and at last I get what I need. I will then have to make further adaptations to this code to develop the site further.
OK if you are still with me do you see my problem? I have effectively got three levels of assistance in this code and have had influences from four seperate people (excluding myself). The code is also largely unrecognisable from what I started with.
Where would you draw the line? I want to give proper acreditation but should I be writing an essay to list all contributors, which might just confuse the reader anyway?
Would love to hear your thoughts :)