5.09 Ensure that there is a fair agreement concerning ownership of any software, processes, research, writing, or other intellectual property to which a software engineer has contributed.

Normally if a software has been develop by a company and it is not categorized under open source licensing it is tend to be a proprietary software. According to the intellectual property act in Sri Lanka legally the developer can claim copyrights to their unique work. Therefore without the permission of the owner of the software, in normal circumstances it is illegal to use the software if it not allowed by the owner.

Software licensing act major part in these ownership issues. For an example if you use an open source software which is under General Public Licensing (GPL), you are free to do any derivative work including changing the software code. But the changes that you have made also have to be release to the public for free use. Also if you build a new software using that code or done any derivative work, that new software or the derivative work has to be come under GPL licensing. Which means you can’t claim for copyrights. But MIT licensing gives you fully freedom where you can claim for an ownership for a derivative work that you have done.