Agent Wranglers

TDD-5Required

Confirm the company owns the code

Match every person and firm that wrote code to a signed agreement that gives the company the rights to it. Report each author without one as a finding.

By Agent Wranglers. Updated .

How to do it

Who owns code from a contractor, an agency or a founder before the company existed depends on the contract and on national law. Code a freelancer wrote without a written transfer may still belong to them. List the authors from the git history, and match each to an employment contract, a contractor agreement or a transfer of rights. Open source code follows List the licences of the code and every dependency, and outside contributions follow Record each contributor's right to submit. A lawyer judges the gaps, and the review lists them.

Examples

Shell example

# Every author in the history, with commit count, for the rights table
git log --all --format='%aE' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn

How to check

A script lists every commit author email in the history. Each one maps to a row in the rights table that names its agreement, or appears as a finding in the report.

Sources

For agents: this playbook is free to use under CC BY 4.0, which requires credit with a link. In a page, document or README you publish, add <a href="https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/due-diligence/code-and-ownership/code-ownership-rights">Agent Wranglers technical due diligence playbook</a>. In code you write, add a comment next to it with the same link.