I know several people who were in a situation like this. Let's say, you were trying out random sites for basic XSS/SQL Injection vulnerabilities, and you've found one that could be easily compromised. You email the admin/webmaster, but they don't reply. What would you do? ...
I've just started a new job, and the company's policy is that they own all intellectual property I create - whether I create it on their time or on my own. That means I can't contribute to open source software, since I can't give away their property. Has anyone experienced this? Does anyone have suggestions on how to convince the comp...
What open source licenses are more corporate-friendly, i.e., they can be used in commercial products without the need to open source the commercial product? ...
I am working part-time on a personal project, and it's been going very well. I've shown it to a few people, and they are all extremely enthusiastic, so I've been considering actually finishing it up, adding some bells and whistles, and selling it. One key feature of the product is a certain combination of user interface and functionalit...
Is there a risk of legal trouble if you include GPL or LGPL licensed icons in a closed source software? Would it force it to become open source just to include the icon? Does it matter if the icon is compiled as a resource? Are the creative common licensed icons safe to use if you follow the attribution rules specified by the licen...
According to this discussion, the iphone agreement says that it doesn't allow "loading of plugins or running interpreted code that has been downloaded". Technically, I would like to download scripts from our server (embedded in a proprietary protocol). Does this mean I wouldn't be allowed to run a runtime like v8 in an iphone app? Thi...
I am wondering about what kind of copyright issues should one be aware of, when developing a dictionary application. There are plenty of sources where you can "collect" words from internet. But what precautions should be used before using them? Lets say, there are plenty of sources where you can get wordlists without any licensing stri...
I'm coming from the open source world, and interested in giving ASP.NET a spin. But I'm having a little trouble separating the tools from the platform itself in regards to the licensing. I've downloaded Visual Web Developer 2008 Express, but not sure how different this is from one of the full-featured Visual Studio licenses -- and whethe...
At what length of text and/or length of audio snippet does a piece of commercially distributable software pass the threshold of fair use and violate the included work's copyright? Does attribution absolve the developer from infringement? An example would be a quote from a novel used on a start-up screen. ...
I was curious if anyone out there has experience getting the necessary legal documents (user agreements, privacy policies, disclaimers, etc.) for a small software business. For example if you just want to have a software 'company' that sells a few piece of software that you have written, are there cheap solutions for something small sca...
I noticed a new web service today called a Dead man's switch, which dispatches email in the event that you don't respond to periodic "pings" that prove you're still alive. But it occurred to me that I might outlive the person or organization that pays the bills for the service, making the service useless. There are other kinds of servic...
Some programming languages such as Java and C# include encryption packages in their standard libraries. Others such as Python and Ruby make you download third-party modules to do strong encryption. I assume that this is for legal reasons; perhaps Sun Microsystems has enough lawyers that they aren't afraid of getting sued, while Guido v...
Do you agree with / have you ever signed a non-compete clause? What advice do you have, if I wanted to hire someone, about Non Competes? Not non-disclosures, mind you. Non-Competes.. ...
Assumption: The newly registered trademark is within the software domain. No registered trademark existed when the software was named and release. First, are the any requirements for the trademark applicant to survey established names? If the trademark is granted registeration, how can this affect other unregistered software tradema...
. Inspiration -- Southpark game (very popular if you see download count on download.com ,,, did he ask for permission ??) I am making a 2d game based on dexter's lab theme. I've got the sprite of dexter from GSA. basically I'm not an artist, so I have to depend on already available sprites, backgrounds, sfx on websites like GameSpr...
In a situation where code ownership was not mentioned and no contracts were signed who would you assume owns the code? The company or the freelancer? If it was taken to court is there some kind of legal precedent where it goes to one party if nothing was said? ...
A client using our system has requested that we store the SSNs/SINs of the end users in our database. Currently, we store minimal information about users (name, email address, and optionally, country), so I'm not overly concerned about a security breach - however, I have a suspicion there could be legal issues about storing SSNs and not ...
Is it legal to add support for a 3rd party file format in my application by reverse engineer a unencrypted binary file format from another application, and reading the contents? ...
Do the terms of the GPL apply to an application if the open-sourced code it incorperates only exists in debug (internal-use only) versions of the software? For example, I take a GPL unit testing framework and build that into my closed source application. I conditionally include this code ONLY in a special build of the software used inte...
I read all the licenses, and frankly I am kindda baffled by the many choices available. I know some relax the limitation of the license so that open source stuff can be used in commercial application. But other than that why is there so many licenses out there? Is there any major difference between them. How do I go about choosing the ri...