Whoops - a bit of a copyright issue on the Healthcare.gov website

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From The Weekly Standard:
Obamacare Website Violates Licensing Agreement for Copyrighted Software
Healthcare.gov, the federal government's Obamacare website, has been under heavy criticism from friend and foe alike during its first two weeks of open enrollment. Repeated errors and delays have prevented many users from even establishing an account, and outside web designers have roundly panned the structure and coding of the site as amateurish and sloppy. The latest indication of the haphazard way in which Healthcare.gov was developed is the uncredited use of a copyrighted web script for a data function used by the site, a violation of the licensing agreement for the software.

The script in question is called DataTables, a very long and complex piece of website software used for formatting and presenting data. DataTables was developed by a British company called SpryMedia which licenses the open-source software freely to anyone who complies with the licensing agreement. A note at the bottom of the DataTables.net website says: "DataTables designed and created by SpryMedia � 2008-2013." The company explains the license for using the software on that website [emphasis added]:
DataTables is free, open source software that you can download and use for whatever purpose you wish, on any and as many sites you want. It is free for you to use! DataTables is available under two licenses: GPL v2 license or a BSD (3-point) license, with which you must comply (to do this, basically keep the copyright notices in the software).
The article has screen-caps of the offending code compared to the source code from the DataTables website. These developers are soooo busted. The software may be free but it is a piece of copyrighted work and the rules of the copyright need to be followed.

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This page contains a single entry by DaveH published on October 17, 2013 4:22 PM.

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