hello
I want to discuss with everybody
in the arduino sample,If don't have any copyright notice.
only thank for one people.
who do you think the copyright owner?
and if you modify this sample, you modify this sample all.
how do you spare the privilege about the copyright is also belong this docuemnt owner ?
If in the business,maybe this is very import topic.
but if in the research,and in the testing,I don't think the copyright is very important.
I want to know your though about the copyright in the arduino samples.
1.in the business.
2.in the testing and research.
Do you mean the example sketches included with the Arduino IDE (File > Examples > 01.Basics, etc.)?
andrewhsiao:
who do you think the copyright owner?
Why does it matter?
andrewhsiao:
and if you modify this sample, you modify this sample all.
how do you spare the privilege about the copyright is also belong this docuemnt owner ?
I don't understand what that means. Are you asking about what license they have?
andrewhsiao:
but if in the research,and in the testing,I don't think the copyright is very important.
I guess it depends on what you mean by "research" and "testing". In the US where I live, and elsewhere, when no license is specified, intellectual property defaults to "all rights reserved". I don't worry about that for my own private use of that code but I would not use "all rights reserved" code in anything I was going to redistribute.
IIRC, there was an effort a while ago to add a statement like
This example code is in the public domain.
To most of the trivial examples.
"public domain" means no copyright, so you can do whatever you want with it.
If more complex sample code does not have a copyright, you need to search the repository where you got it from, looking for an explanation of the "license." Most licenses require keeping the original copyright notice, but they vary greatly on other requirements (whether you can use it in proprietary code, whether you have to "give back" improvements, whether the original author needs to get credit in documentation, etc.) There is a lot that has been written about the various Software Licenses that are popularly in use...
If there is no public domain statement, no copyright notice, and no license that you can find, you should assume that the code is copyrighted by SOMEBODY, even if you can't figure out who. If it's non-trivial code, that makes it difficult for anyone else to use. Try to contact the owner and suggest that they add a license and copyright.