numero = 19038
interpreted = N
texte = >Anybody have any copyright lingo for templates created? > >What are the copyright issues for customization, development, >customization of our own templates?The issues are that copyrighting your templates won't do a whole lot of good, even though copyrighting is *supposed* to legally protect your work.The problem is that the code is clearly visible, so anyone can copy it, or parts of it, and then sell it or use it somewhere else without your permission. I actually had one client change my copyright notices to his own, and another one who went out and re-sold my work to others without the legal right to do so. Of course, I have never received a penny from those illegal sales, and I don't have the resources to find the users of my illegally pirated code -- but I did get the illegal copyright changes reversed (after after threatening a federal lawsuit).Unfortunately, if you don't have an army of researchers to track down this kind of illegal actvity, and money to pursue the ongoing legal action, there's no practical way of protecting your WebCatalog 2.x code short of never letting it out of your office or off your own server.Encrypted templates, a new optional feature of version 3.x, will change all this, because encrypted templates cannot be read by anything other than WebCatalog 3.x ... so at least that makes it VERY difficult for someone to reverse engineer your encrypted templates. In fact, PCS plans to encrypt special templates which will perform WebMerchant's capabilities almost entirely within WebCatalog, and they wrote the encryption code that protects these special templates, so if they trust it, it is a very good security measure.But there's a negative side to template encryption for WebDNA programmers too, and that's the fact that encrypted templates are impossible to modify, even in the smallest way. You actually have to go back to the original UNencrypted templates to make your changes, then re-generate a new set of encrypted templates in order to fix things the client doesn't happen to like or that you made mistakes on.Yes, this insures that you will always be needed, even for the smallest changes to the HTML or WebDNA in your client's web sites -- so there's 'job security' in encrypting your templates -- but it may also have the effect of irritating a client who expects to be able to make whatever changes he/she desires AFTER you have created and delivered the templates for his/her site.You can, of course, assemble your pages in such a way as to use [include] files, or [search]es, or [lookup]s instead of hard-coding most of your text, tables, etc., but that may make the site harder to develop to begin with, and most clients aren't willing to spend the up-front money for that kind of extra work, so that means the extra work is an expense you will probably have to absorb yourself if you intend to give your clients the flexibility to make their own changes to the content or design of your encrypted WebDNA sites ...Still, template encryption is the *only* way a WebDNA programmer has of protecting his code from theft or abuse. You never see PCS or StarNine or Microsoft including the source code to their software in their licensed software packages ... but that's exactly what every WebDNA programmer has been forced to do every time he or she delivers a set of WebDNA templates to a client.Until template encryption becomes a reality in version 3.x, a WebDNA programmer's work is subject to VERY EASY THEFT and/or abuse from the instant it leaves the developer's office. And being that most WebDNA programmers are small outfits of one or two people, they generally don't have the resources to stop their clients from behaving illegally.Template encryption in version 3.x is an exceptionally valuable new feature for those who develop WebDNA sites for a living. It even protects against the possibility that *other people's software* is written or configured improperly on the server, because even if someone manages to download a raw encrypted template they cannot get at the source code ... :)Sincerely, Ken Grome 808-737-6499 WebDNA Solutions mailto:ken@webdna.net http://www.webdna.net
Associated Messages, from the most recent to the oldest:
>Anybody have any copyright lingo for templates created? > >What are the copyright issues for customization, development, >customization of our own templates?The issues are that copyrighting your templates won't do a whole lot of good, even though copyrighting is *supposed* to legally protect your work.The problem is that the code is clearly visible, so anyone can copy it, or parts of it, and then sell it or use it somewhere else without your permission. I actually had one client change my copyright notices to his own, and another one who went out and re-sold my work to others without the legal right to do so. Of course, I have never received a penny from those illegal sales, and I don't have the resources to find the users of my illegally pirated code -- but I did get the illegal copyright changes reversed (after after threatening a federal lawsuit).Unfortunately, if you don't have an army of researchers to track down this kind of illegal actvity, and money to pursue the ongoing legal action, there's no practical way of protecting your WebCatalog 2.x code short of never letting it out of your office or off your own server.Encrypted templates, a new optional feature of version 3.x, will change all this, because encrypted templates cannot be read by anything other than WebCatalog 3.x ... so at least that makes it VERY difficult for someone to reverse engineer your encrypted templates. In fact, PCS plans to encrypt special templates which will perform WebMerchant's capabilities almost entirely within WebCatalog, and they wrote the encryption code that protects these special templates, so if they trust it, it is a very good security measure.But there's a negative side to template encryption for WebDNA programmers too, and that's the fact that encrypted templates are impossible to modify, even in the smallest way. You actually have to go back to the original UNencrypted templates to make your changes, then re-generate a new set of encrypted templates in order to fix things the client doesn't happen to like or that you made mistakes on.Yes, this insures that you will always be needed, even for the smallest changes to the HTML or WebDNA in your client's web sites -- so there's 'job security' in encrypting your templates -- but it may also have the effect of irritating a client who expects to be able to make whatever changes he/she desires AFTER you have created and delivered the templates for his/her site.You can, of course, assemble your pages in such a way as to use [include] files, or [search]es, or [lookup]s instead of hard-coding most of your text, tables, etc., but that may make the site harder to develop to begin with, and most clients aren't willing to spend the up-front money for that kind of extra work, so that means the extra work is an expense you will probably have to absorb yourself if you intend to give your clients the flexibility to make their own changes to the content or design of your encrypted WebDNA sites ...Still, template encryption is the *only* way a WebDNA programmer has of protecting his code from theft or abuse. You never see PCS or StarNine or Microsoft including the source code to their software in their licensed software packages ... but that's exactly what every WebDNA programmer has been forced to do every time he or she delivers a set of WebDNA templates to a client.Until template encryption becomes a reality in version 3.x, a WebDNA programmer's work is subject to VERY EASY THEFT and/or abuse from the instant it leaves the developer's office. And being that most WebDNA programmers are small outfits of one or two people, they generally don't have the resources to stop their clients from behaving illegally.Template encryption in version 3.x is an exceptionally valuable new feature for those who develop WebDNA sites for a living. It even protects against the possibility that *other people's software* is written or configured improperly on the server, because even if someone manages to download a raw encrypted template they cannot get at the source code ... :)Sincerely, Ken Grome 808-737-6499 WebDNA Solutions mailto:ken@webdna.net http://www.webdna.net
Kenneth Grome
The WebDNA community talk-list is the best place to get some help: several hundred extremely proficient programmers with an excellent knowledge of WebDNA and an excellent spirit will deliver all the tips and tricks you can imagine...