npch
commented
6 years ago I can attempt to answer this:
The original author did not explicitly request credit or provide a suggested citation, but nonetheless does he have a grievance in this case?
Yes. In most countries, copyright is automatically assigned on generation of the code and has to be explicitly relicensed. Again, in most countries this means that because the author did not explicitly grant this, the code still belongs to them.
This is complicated by the fact that in most cases, copyright on the code will be with the organisation employing the author, rather than the author themselves. Therefore if the other person who reused the code was at the same organisation, then they used the code legally, but I would say that the original author still has a valid grievance for not being acknowledged.
Does this sort of use by a colleague in the same agency fall under fair and free use?
The definition of fair use varies from country to country, but certainly in the UK this would not fall under any of the exemptions for fair use. However as noted above, if they were both at the same organisation, it might be legal because the copyright is with the organisation.
Did the requester have an acknowledgement responsibility to the original author in this case?
I would say that they have a moral responsibility. It would be interesting to see if the organisation has an explicit policy on this. If not, it probably should, at least for preventing fights amongst employees!
danielskatz
A use case for the Software Citation hackathon at the FORCE2017: Short version: Sharing and/or copy-pasting code is very common, so when does the line get crossed where citation is warranted, and how do we spread this best practice?
A software developer in the USGS created a web app for his local science center. A person at another science center noticed the app and asked for the source code. The author passed on the source code to the requestor in good faith and in the interest of sharing with no explicit request for credit or citation. The author later found an application being promoted by a regional director in a widespread email distribution which was essentially an exact copy of the app he had authored. The copy was being promoted and praised as the original work of the local science center. The author did a difference check between the source code of his own app and the one now being promoted. The only difference between them was the section of code dealing with the source of the data being displayed on the map. No credit was ever given to the original author and the original author was only made aware of the existence of the other application and its promotion when a colleague pointed it out to him.
A few questions (optional to share): The original author did not explicitly request credit or provide a suggested citation, but nonetheless does he have a grievance in this case? Does this sort of use by a colleague in the same agency fall under fair and free use? Did the requester have an acknowledgement responsibility to the original author in this case?