Do you really think you own your code?

I work on a new project, or rather on a set of small projects by creating small PEAR packages, that will provide my own native PEAR commands.

My intention is to create simple tools, that would potentially save me a lot of time when it comes to repetitive tasks. See for example my Kuziel_PEAR_Command_Database package which is the first official package of the whole project).

I reckon "don't repeat yourself" is a good rule, however, you have to put a lot of energy to create such a tools to be able to do so. Hence, why I started work on this "project".

I discussed the idea of the project in our cosy private IRC chat room with Jim to get his opinions on this.

Note: You can read about the importance of instant feedback in a post by Matt on 37signals's blog.

Anyway, if you think about repetitive tasks, it is mostly about some sort of generation of something. Generation of code, configurations, and so on.

And here comes the problem. Actually, not really a problem, but rather something worth to discuss, before you start doing generators of any sort.

So, the thing is that in some cases it is not very clear who owns the copyright of the generated code!

Jim, raised the question about this on RoR's forum bridge.

And if case you're interested, you can also read his thoughts about it, in his post Who owns your code?

As for my project, I think I need to spend some time over the weekend re-reading parts of Innovation happens elsewhere, where open source licencing and copyright issues are discussed very well and also keep my eye on the RoR forum's discussion to see where it will go.

And as for now: "All your code are belong to us …"