If you have doubts about a particular snippet, you can send a message to its author.

By far and large, most code posted here is too small to be covered by Copyright. They cover basic tasks and module usage, and thus cover necessary steps for doing those tasks or using those modules. That's not Copyrightable.

And then there's intent. Except for questions and CUFP, the code posted here is given to help the requester and other readers.

Feel free to use any of mine in any manner you wish.

This subject has come up before. You should do a search for previous discussions on the topic.

Strictly speaking (and one should always speak strictly, especially to animals and small children) anything posted here is copyrighted by the poster unless copyright has been transferred. That's true in most jurisdictions, any way. Equally strictly speaking you should request permission from the copyright owner before reusing his/her/its material. The owner may then give permission (or not) under any license they wish.

In the real world, you can pretty much use anything you wish that's posted on PerlMonks without getting into trouble. It is common courtesy, though, to contact the author if you're proposing to reuse anything non-trivial.

Legalese: anyone can use this post for any purpose they wish, in the rather unlikely event that any would actually want to!

Paul

> It is common courtesy, though, to contact the author if you're proposing to reuse anything non-trivial.

IMHO the author should be just mentioned and a link to the post given, thats what I do with non-trivial code.

Cheers Rolf

Mostly, forum contents are open to everyone. Don't worry about the licenses. It's just a way of helping each other.

:p

License terms for monastery code?, Copyright of code on Perlmonks

If the post does not include an explicit statement, check the poster's home node to see if they have made a blanket statement on the subject (as I, among others, have done). If there is no statement to be found, then assume that copyright is held by the author of the code. Asking permission of the author is the next "right" step.

Now, a post by Anonymous Monk carries no author identity, making this process impossible.

Now, a post by Anonymous Monk carries no author identity, making this process impossible.

But that doesn't mean writings by the Anonymous Monk aren't protected by copyright.

If the post does not include an explicit statement, check the poster's home node to see if they have made a blanket statement on the subject (as I, among others, have done).

Ehm, if I'm concerned about the legality of using code posted here, would I really be satisfied by a remark under the moniker "herveus" about his code? If I get sued by the person writing under the name "herveus", does my claim that at one point in time the "home node" contained a disclaimer to use the code hold up in court? By the time of the court case, the page may have gone. Or perhaps the entire perlmonks site will be gone by then. Of course, the plaintiff himself may have a hard time proving it was him writing under the name of "herveus".

Howdy!

Anonymous writings may be protected by copyright, but taking action to enforce that copyright would appear to require dropping the cloak of anonymity. I'm simply noting that if one were to try to exercise due diligence and secure permission from the copyright holder, you can't do that for posts by Anonymous Monk.

If you are being diligent, you would capture the terms attached to the material in question at the same time, so that you could produce evidence that you did operate under the published terms of use in effect at the time. Making a good faith effort to record the relevant information for future reference ought to go far towards mitigating any future nastiness.

yours,
Michael