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case 1: Sometimes I cannot figure out how to make things to work like in this question,Sending drive names to the combo box. In this case I know how to add items to a combo box as well as about getting drive names but I could not figure how to combine those two in order to work. So I asked the question and since I have tried I got a complete working answer so would using this answer as it is for the development of my application be considered plagiarism?

case 2: This is quite similar to case 1, but the answer is not given to me i.e. the question was asked by someone else and they received the answer and I searched the internet found the answer and used the answer as it is in my source code, would that be considered plagiarism?

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VISWESWARAN NAGASIVAM
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  • possible duplicate of Where does one draw the line between inspiration and plagiarism? – gnat Apr 29 '16 at 16:57
  • For school purposes, you're supposed to solve problems yourself to show you understand the material you're being taught, and copying answers from the internet is cheating. For work purposes, you're supposed to get a working solution, and (unless you stole copyrighted work and risk your employer being sued), you've done that. So, which is it? School, academia, or work? – Useless Apr 29 '16 at 16:58
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    Plagiarism mainly matters for academics. At work you need to care about copyright violations. – CodesInChaos Apr 29 '16 at 17:01
  • @Useless it is not a school homework. so if i have a specific problem and i've got an complete answer for my problem can I use it? – VISWESWARAN NAGASIVAM Apr 29 '16 at 17:03
  • @CodesInChaos so QA sites like Stack overflow etc., do have copyright violations? Thanks – VISWESWARAN NAGASIVAM Apr 29 '16 at 17:07
  • @VISWESWARAN1998 In principle answers can be copyrighted, in which case you need to comply with the license. Since that's CC-BY-SA, a license badly suited for code, this is problematic. Many answers may not meet the threshold of originality required for copyright protection, in which case reusing it is no problem. I recommend using answers only to learn how to solve a problem, instead of copy&paste. Though in practice many users ignore the copyright issues and simply use code from SO as-is. If you can do that depends on how risk averse your company is. – CodesInChaos Apr 29 '16 at 17:13
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    No, that would be the answer if the question were about copyright violations. But your question is about plagiarism, which is a different subject. – Philip Kendall Apr 29 '16 at 17:38

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Plagiarism is using other people's content without proper attribution. To avoid plagiarism simply crediting the original answer is enough. Plagiarism is severe misconduct in academia, but not a big deal in most companies. What companies care about are legal risks, in this case copyright violations.

In principle answers can be copyrighted, in which case you need to comply with the license. In the case of stackoverflow that's CC-BY-SA, a copyleft license ill suited for code. So copying code from stackoverflow answers is problematic. (Stackexchange wants to change the license to the better suited MIT one, but for some reason was met with backlash from the community)

To be copyrightable content needs to meet the threshold of originality and I suspect many answers do not. In which case you can use them without violating copyright, though attribution would still be polite. Unfortunately determining if this is the case, as a non lawyer is tricky.

In my experience many users ignore these copyright issues, but if your company is sufficiently risk averse, it will not be happy if you just copy&paste an answer. To reduce this risk, I recommend studying the answer to learn how the problem can be solved, and then writing your own code.

The usual disclaimers, like me not being a lawyer apply

CodesInChaos
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There is "plagiarism" and there is "copyright infringement". "Plagiarism" is using someone else's work, and pretending it is yours. If you solve your school homework using code from stackoverflow, that would likely be plagiarism. You get a good grade that you don't deserve.

In a professional job, there is no need for plagiarism. Your boss doesn't hold it against you if you used stackoverflow to solve a problem. There is no need to pretend. What counts is that the problem is solved. But your boss will have a problem with copyright infringement, because that may make the company liable in a bad way.

But this problem is easily solved: Don't copy. Consider that you are responsible for the quality of your code. So use stackoverflow to learn how to do something. And then you write it yourself. You should never, ever, incorporate code that you don't understand, because if you don't understand it, you can't judge the consequences. And learning and understanding will make you a better developer.

gnasher729
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