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Software Engineering Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [law]

This tag is for questions about legal advice which is generally off-topic per the help center.

Before asking any questions about law, please read the help center:

and it is not about... legal advice or aid

Also, please read this: What types of legal questions are on-topic here?

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How do I spot and document a GPL violation?

How to spot that someone copied open source code licensed with GPL to their closed source commercial application, when you don't have access to their closed source code? Edit: Great answers! Part 2. What if it is a webapp where you don't even have…
siamii
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Does Quebec require all output, including internal logs, to be in French?

I've once heard a Microsoft architect say that, in Quebec, program output must be in French, including the custom log output that would be used by service technicians in other countries who don't speak French or are Quebecois. Apparently, it's in…
Anthony Mastrean
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3 answers

Can I use my username in a legal license?

I have an open source project, but I don't want to use my real name in the license file. Legally, can I just use my project hosting username instead? I know programmers Are Not Lawyers™, but I'm looking for advice from people who may have dealt…
Maxpm
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Is there any legislation requiring how we store passwords?

Given the Sony data breach and other events recently, is there any actual laws or regulation regarding how to store passwords? I think there are with credit cards, you're not allowed to store the 3 digit key or something. Is it illegal to actually…
RoboShop
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How to protect intellectual property when oursourcing software development?

I'm a small company needing to outsource software development. I've written both functional and technical specifications for GUI developers and back-end (C or PHP) developers to implement my software application. I'm a little nervous handing over…
gkdsp
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How to convince a client that you will not steal his idea

I came across a thread entitled How To Stop A Developer From Stealing Your Business Idea and i can't help but raise a brow. The issue talks about a developer being able to pass on the idea to another and benefit from it. As a developer, what is the…
gladysbixly
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Trademark question: naming an app after a common noun when an app from another store uses it

Here's my scenario with made-up names: A big company called Supersoft have announced that in about 3 months they're going to release an Android app called "Supersoft Metronome" (where Metronome is a fairly common noun). I want to call my new iPhone…
rebeccamaher
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How to avoid being sued for your software?

I have a written a small app as a research project that uses open source libraries. It can do packet sniffing, network scanning and man in the middle attacks on wifi and lan. This software is intended to be used for security auditing. But users can…
siamii
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So what happens with closed-source law?

Lets say Alice Co. writes a program, and Bob Co. hires a contractor to copy it, and put it on their platform? What is the general legal recourse in these cases? I say general, because most of us are programmers, not lawyers, and we all understand…
Incognito
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What's stopping an app from using another platform's storage, for free?

Let me clarify on a bit of an abstract question. I'm about to develop an app, through which users can capture and store images. Commercially, the main cost here that springs to mind is storage cost. There are platforms (e.g. facebook, dropbox,…
DanDev
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Does Un copyrighted software or code fall automatically under copyright?

A programming tutorial, code, software anything that doesn't have a copyright notice or a license ,is it automatically copyrighted to the author ? or its the same as something under public domain or something else ? and does this differ from country…
XEL
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Developing assistance tools for games, is it legal against the game creator?

Imagine if for a realtime strategy game, for reaserch and some fun a tool has been made which monitors the minimap of the game and warns the user if the enemy movement is being detected. Does selling and/or distributing such stuff have legal…
Dumbo
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Source code and project documentation requirements for legal agreement

Question What kind of documentation and other artifacts would you expect to get in case of taking over existing Java webapp (probably it uses JBoss Seam framework) made in-house? I would expect to get: Source code in form ready to open in specified…
Grzegorz Gierlik
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Website inheritance of ownership question

I paid for a web site for my motel business, then due to my landlord actions I was placed in a position to file for bankrupcy. I asked my IT manager and web developer to close down the web site for the business. He has since then sold my web site…
anon
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Open source from protected rights

I've got a question about author rights and open source software. Assuming I want to build a software. A similar software is already created, but isn't free at all and owned by a company. Can a build an open source clone of the proprietary software…
Moktuss
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