In academia, it\'s considered cheating if a student copies code/work from someon

Question

In academia, it's considered cheating if a student copies code/work from someone/somewhere else without giving credit, and tries to pass it off as his/her own.

Should companies make it a requirement for developers to properly credit all non-trivial code and work that they did not produce themselves? Is it useful to do so, or is it simply overkill?

I understand there are various free licenses out there, but if I find stuff I like and actually use, I really feel compelled to give credit via comment in code even if it's not required by the license (or lack thereof one).

Explanation / Answer

I'd say this is probably essential. For one thing, the company may need to deal with any license terms and other legal implications - just because it's "free" doesn't mean you can do what you like with it.

However, there may be an exception with example code copied and adapted from reference books. After all, that's basically what that code is there for. Even so, a comment is a good idea - someone may need to go back to the source for bugfixes (e.g. in errata), or for a better understanding of why you used it.

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