G'day:
As you hopefully know, a coupla months back I wrote a document "Documentation for CFScript". This document is on GitHub for everyone to reference and collaborate with: CFScript documentation.
Please note that anything written on this blog is copyrighted, and that repository on GitHub is specifically not licensed (ie: there is no license.md). This means I do not actively give licence for people to do with it what they like. With no licence, the usual copyright laws apply automatically.
Update
Actually I just noticed I licensed that specific work under Creative Commons (it's inline in the doc). So despite my notice for James to stop using copyrighted material, provided he posts the creative commons notice on his blog, that'll be fine. Well it'll get him off the hook. I still don't think what he has done is "fine".TBH, my position is that if people ask to use stuff I write, I will almost certainly say "yeah, go for it... just attribute me appropriately". But... you know... ask first.
Anyway, I was pleased to see a Twitter message this morning:
(I've removed the person's identity as I do not want to shoot the messenger here. The link goes to here: CFScript Reference Guide Part 1 - The Basics)
I was pleased because it seemed someone else was talking about CFScript, which is a good thing. The more people facilitate others using CFScript (instead of writing everything in tags) the better.
I followed the link and what I saw was very very very familiar to me. I found myself thinking... I wrote this (or more "I wrote this... well clearly not that bit, but... well most of it"). And checking back to my CFScript document there were striking similarities:
James's version:
My version:
That's close to identical. Except - unbelievably given my paucity of design skills - my version looks a bit cleaner and clearer.
And the rest of the doc is like that too. Aside from the odd word, it's just a completely knock off.
I would not have minded this had James said "I grabbed this from Adam's original work (here)", or there was a reasonable effort on his part to actually add to the original work to - in some way - improve on it. And maybe perhaps the ratio of his work to the copy of mine was within an order of magnitude of each other.
I commented on the article (which has not been moderator-approved yet), and pointed out the plagiarism on Twitter:
.@webdevsourcerer: not cool plagiarising my work and claiming it as your own: http://t.co/lva6yVZfSY #CFML
— Adam Cameron (@DAC_dev) January 17, 2015
James has clearly seen one or both of these as this this morning the lead-in para of his page read like this (I took a snapshot of the page via the Internet Archive):
The Ol'Sourcerer has been working on putting together a robust (and hopefully) as complete as possible CFScript Reference Guide. It's been compiled from a number of resources, aside from my own knowledge and use. I had decided to break the Guide down into parts so it didn't seem too over daunting. Enjoy this guide to CFScript.
He has since updated it to read this:
The Ol'Sourcerer has been working on putting together and compiling from several sources, (references below) a robust (and hopefully) as complete as possible CFScript Reference Guide. It's been compiled from a number of resources, aside from my own knowledge and use. I had decided to break the Guide down into parts so it didn't seem too over daunting. Enjoy this guide to CFScript.
(my emphasis)
And indeed there are references:
References for this guide Include Adam Cameron's Blog and CFSCript Reference, Adobe Documentation, Railo Documentation, WebDevSourcerer.com and real-life experience.
Well that's a bit better.
However sorry James, you've now fucked me off for being a plagiarising little shit, so I do not grant you permission to use my copyrighted material.
Please remove it from your blog. And please learn a lesson to not be a disingenuous person, claiming other people's work as your own. This is piracy, and theft of intellectual property. Both practices I really do not approve of. Next time... ask. I shall not follow this matter up beyond this
Thanks for wasting my time today having to follow this up. This was not the piece of writing I had in mind to share with the community today. Nice one. Not.
Righto.
--
Adam
