Legal Aspects of Open Code

Copyright and the attribution of other people’s programming work are central legal aspects of Open Code. The problem of code plagiarism should also be considered here. When reusing Open Code, you should clearly separate the parts you wrote yourself from the parts you reused, for the sake of transparency. If you use a version control system such as Git, you can copy (“fork”) an existing project and make changes that remain clearly visible in the version history.

Open Code is published under a licence. The licence determines what others may do with the code and therefore defines how open it is. What you need to consider when reusing code is explained in the entry Reusing Open Code. How to choose a suitable licence for your own code is described in the entry Publish Open Code Under a Suitable Licence.

In principle, anything a licence does not explicitly permit is prohibited, unless you ask the authors for permission. Documentation of code or software can also be protected by copyright, whether it is written as comments in the code or as a separate manual. However, some source code may not be protected by copyright because it is very simple or short. Copyright protects works that reach a certain threshold of originality, i.e. that show a certain degree of originality and creativity. Whether copyright applies cannot be answered in general terms.