toronto district school board owning all student assignments?

[chopperdudes]

simple question, does each and all assignments belong to the school board? and if is what counts as an assignment?

here's my situation right now.
for our final computer ISU, our group developed a parent teacher interview booking program online (with flash, php, mysql, html etc..). after that our school actually decides to ask us to develop it more into a full blown product. (well actually the school had the idea in mind during the summer and that's why we got it as an ISU, but this doesn't rly matter cuz what we have right now is so far off than what we submitted for the ISU). from the start we never rly imagined any monetary revenue from this, and would be glad if the school actually uses it i guess. However, this program is actually being used as i type, and everything is going rly smoothly actually.

our teacher informed us today that another school is actually interested in using the program. and when i asked whether we get any benefits from that, he said no, cuz every assignment belongs to the school board....

????????????

[A.J]

That's stupid....its your program, and therefore you should get the credit...

[SNIPERDUDE]

Take it to the highest authority you can.

[Insectoid]

Damn, you should definitely be getting some compensation (cash-wise) for that.

[chopperdudes]

well... the whole point of our school making us do this right now is because we don't have the money to buy the commercial product (which costs over $1/student/year). And i guess we agreed to do it for our school....

but i guess this whole (who owns this and what not) issue wasn't really there at the beginning cuz we never imagined this to work out. but yeah right now it's actually working out, and new issues like these come up...

[DemonWasp]

What you really need to do is determine exactly how you want to license your program. For example, you could distribute it under a standard commercial license, on a per-workstation, per-deployment, per-customer, or case-by-case cost, for free, or even with an Open Source, educational or similar license.

Be aware that you will have to fight to get your program back under control. You may have to prove that you wrote this program (try to remember as many details of how it works as possible; file names and formats, etc).

You absolutely deserve full credit for a program you wrote, but that isn't necessarily the way it's going to work. Legality trumps "should" and "deserve" every time.

Another thing to consider is that if you produce a modified version of the original (v2.0?), that may be affected by the outcome of the licensing on the original source code (if it's not yours, you may not be allowed to modify it, preposterous though that is). You might, on the other hand, be able to upgrade the software in some way (security, performance, capabilities, etc) and then offer to license that version to the TDSB - though they might not accept; school boards tend to be very hesitant about upgrading software.

You should also look into the definition of "verbal contract" in the area and determine whether you've entered into any such contracts with your teacher, principal, the school board, or whatever else.

Get your story straight. Gather supporting evidence. Keep it organised. Establish a timeline. Make a mind-map or similar structure showing all the key people, events and so forth. Remember that because you are young, adults will default to skepticism of your claims more readily than they would for other adults. Do not be dissuaded.

Never become upset or angry: you need to make a logical case. This is where those stupid English courses come in handy: you need to convey your argument, intention and proof clearly, concisely, and accurately. Remember your audience: they may not know how computers work, they may not know what programming is, or how much effort it takes. Always argue from the basis of facts; even when discussing whether it makes you angry to have your work stolen, the answer should be "yes, I feel robbed of my work and effort", not "yes, that's just like so unfair!".

If you want to get really serious, start recording all conversations had on the topic. Your chat programs all have a feature to do this, and most of them have it turned on by default. You may have an MP3 player that can record sound; use it or borrow one. Look up any existing documentation you have (source code, conversations with the teacher / school board) and immediately save them, preferably onto CDs - it's too easy to lose data on a hard disk by accident.


The Toronto District School Board does not and should not own your work, whether for assignments or otherwise.

[SNIPERDUDE]

That's some pretty solid advice there.

[revangrey]

A bit OT but I heard (from a teacher powerpoint presentation) that it is plagarism to use an assignment from one year to the next.

For example handing in an assignment one year, removing the rubric once it has been marked, and handing it in the next year.

I don't know if this still counts when you present a very similar speech year to year...

But who is this plagarising off of? After all you did all the work right?



Back on topic I think that is just the school board being silly and trying to save a few pennies.

In my opinion you should get compensation.

The school board wastes money frivolously as it is, and it could stand to spend some well. (I know what I am talking about, they really do waste money)

[Tony]

every response here mandates an IANAL (I am not a lawyer -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IANAL ) tag.

The way I understand it is that under the Canadian copyright law students own the copyright to their papers. The relationship with their academic institution grants the rights to review, mark, and when appropriate, retain a copy of the submitted work, but the copyright remains with the student. The copy is meant for the archive purposes.

In Canada the copyright is implicitly granted as the work is produced, but you might have to prove that you are indeed the original author. Documentation is the key.

If you are the copyright holder (that is, you have produced the work and have not signed away the rights to that work or issued an exclusive license to another party), then you may license it as you wish.

Open Source is a popular choice for software, but there are a lot of different kinds. Unless it's a non-commercial type, then another party might still profit from it. And even if it is explicitly licensed as non-commercial, it might still be a huge hassle to fight over that (copyright vs. patents in software, for one). That is, if the school board is even profiting from it. (If there were deals that were made, try to find out what they were)

It might be in your best interest to get the involved parties to work with you, rather then jumping into a fight. I understand that this could be an emotional situation, but try to stay focused.