Watermarks

[Precious]

Hi,

Is there a way on how to add watermarks or atleast how we can protect the knimeworkflow that we build?

This is just to avoid any credit grabbers owning the workflow that you created as if it was theirs.

Thank you

[mlauber71]

@Precious I don’t think there is a technical way. You can set an author, a description in the meta data or put a text file in the folder of the workflow - but technically there is I think no way to prevent someone from using the nodes or workflow - also since one idea of knime is to be able to re-use examples.

From my perspective the best “watermark” would be sharing and publications/articles - so at least over time everyone (in your environment) will know that you make great workflows. And I always encourage people to give credit and put links to their sources in their work - which as a trained historian might come with the territory . Also if you share and help you might discover that other people are more open to also help you and they ask your advice which grows your network.

Also if a company or organisation instead of rewarding people who share would give incentives for falsely claiming other people’s work they will run into problems and might not be the best environment to grow.

[iCFO]

I regularly add a workflow annotation on workflows that I build and share. (Just a text box that says “iCFO” with logo matching background and colors) It is by no means “protected”, as it can be easily deleted. It is more for branding, helping me recognize internal built projects, and helping to deter outside tinkering on production workflows that I build for clients.

[iCFO]

If you wanted to be sneaky then I guess you could place an annotation box containing the info about the author way outside of the view of the nodes so that it can only be see if you zoom way out. That way it would be unlikely to be found and deleted if someone was trying to pass your work off as their own. There is a chance that you could zoom way back, locate it, and use it as evidence with a supervisor. Obviously any work environment where this would be necessary is quite toxic. Proving malicious behavior might be required in an extreme situation, but it would also likely only add to the toxicity of the environment.

[wurz]

Hey @Precious,

what is the exact use case? Who do you want to share your workflow with and why would there be a problem?

I guess the best way is to publish your workflow in GitHub or GitLab and put a license there. The license then defines how other users are allowed to use your workflows.

Best, J