What license should I use so that my interview code test is not used for free? | Hacker News Reader

What license should I use so that my interview code test is not used for free?

5 pointsitqwertz4 comments

Howdy,

I recently got a take-home coding assessment assignment that was estimated at taking one day to complete.

After spending 4 hours on it already, I have a sneaking suspicion that the code I am writing in their repository will be used for their own work. There were a lot of twists and turns in this assessment (a CSV file that wasn't formatted correctly, implementing many time-consuming features that are not publicly available in the recommended framework, a pixel-perfect expectation, unit test requirements, and much more!). I'm an experienced developer who has actually had to build applications like this, so I know how much time it takes even a hotshot/unicorn/ninja developer to implement this.

So, what license could I apply to my work such that I would have legal grounds to sue if they decide to not give me an offer and instead use the free labor for their startup?

I don't think you need to add any explicit license at all. Any code you write is automatically copyrighted by you, unless it's a "work for hire" situation. And no one else has any right to use your work unless you grant it to them explicitly (outside of "fair use" and the like).

I'd just slap some "Copyright (2020) - @itqwertz - All Rights Reserved" notices in all the source files and call it done.

Of course you have to ask... does it really matter? I mean, if they do use your code, would you ever know about it? And if you did know, would it be worth initiating legal proceedings over?

You might consider AGPL, they won't touch that at Google [1]:

> The primary risk presented by AGPL is that any product or service that depends on AGPL-licensed code, or includes anything copied or derived from AGPL-licensed code, may be subject to the virality of the AGPL license. This viral effect requires that the complete corresponding source code of the product or service be released to the world under the AGPL license. This is triggered if the product or service can be accessed over a remote network interface, so it does not even require that the product or service is actually distributed.

[1] https://opensource.google/docs/using/agpl-policy/

You aren't going to get the job if you stick a license in there. If this is what you think is going on, I would simply pass on the job.

I get that, but I realize I already pushed some codeMagic™ to the repo and don't want them to use it for the bootstrapped startup.

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