Feedback on NI Community
Code snippet licensing when posted to forum
I just saw in a thread a case of someone plagiarising altenbach's code which was previously uploaded to the forum. This has happened in the past.
This got me wondering, what (if any) license do code snippets uploaded to the forum fall under? What about user posted content? Should there be a blanket default license applied to code posted to the forum? For example Stack Overflow explicitly states any content posted by users is licensed under CC BY-SA.
As I understand it, unlicensed code can not be reused in any form without explicit consent from the author, and the author has sole copyright over the code. AFAIK this is the current situation with any code snippets posted by forum users (with the exception of code in the Code Exchange, which is under the NI-SCL).
Personally, if I upload code snippets or examples to the forum which I haven't explicitly licensed, that code is free to use without any restrictions or attribution necessary (I might add something like this to my sig now that I think about it).
What do others think? Should there be a default license or license statement for code snippets?
The only thing I would like is a link to the original forum thread where the code was posted. (or example programs pages, some other site, etc.). It really helps in the discussion.
The main problem without such link is that we can easily misjudge the LabVIEW expertise of the poster.
Personally, an ever worse problem is if somebody takes my code, completely butchers and breaks it, then re-posts it with my original file name (e.g. *_MODCA.VI or similar) and all my credentials still in place (e.g. in diagram comments), making people think I write code like that. Happened many times. 😄
