Topic: programing for school (Page 1 of 1)

i am an working on a project for my school. It is a small software that will help our secretary with administration. My classmates and i now dont want this software to be selt to other schools. we want this software to be open source. do we have a chance of geting through with this or are we at the mercy of our school that can do what they want with this software? do you get me?

Basically, if the school gave you this as an assignment and you do it on their equipment that desicion is the schools, not yours. You can of course bring it up with the teacher or whomever gave you the assignment, but it will be their call.

If you saw the need, started the project and then got approval to adapt your application for the schools admin you have a much stronger case to decide on open source it or not. This still needs to be decided together with the school though, they must know about it and accept to use open source software in the organisation. Not all government controlled institutions allow that.

/Dan

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-{ ?The Internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it.? (-Barlow, John Perry) }-

You giving a project to your school for there use does not give them the right to redistribute it in any format. They would be violating your copyright, unless you specifically agree that the program is their to do whatever they want with it. Were they to sell it to another university you would be well within your right to sue for copyright infringement.

Even if you use school equipment to do this project it still does not make it theirs, because you pay to use the school's equipment.

If they pay you to write this, or you agree to some verbal or written contract that the end product the above is void and follows the contract you have laid out.

However, were you to license this software under an open source license like the GPL they would still be able to resell the software, much like how read hat does thing, but they would have to ship the source code with the software, or make the source freely available to those who they have given the binarys to.

But, like Dan has said, it is best to discuss these issues with your professor, or the administrators you are working with.

Dan @ Code Town