Using hobby source code in your job ?

[Jim P]

And what happens if you refuse? That, I think, is the real test.

Richard

To me, I would have been open and upfront about what I was doing in my
time. I would have made comment about it around the company - - other
workers and even with the boss around. and if he is a good boss he
would be noticing this and paying attention and asking questions about
it. - - - as I said before this type of person makes a good engineer and
programmer. the 8 to 5 this is only a job - - do not. I would want to
keep the one that really digs this stuff.

I would not do this as a hidden and secert project for that just raises
questions of why did you hide this.

In fact many boss, would encourage this type of work and I know of some
that have heard of someone needing a consultant and they point an
employee to that company - for a side job. - - - and they know that
some of their programmers and engineers are doing small side jobs for
different companies.

I would not be running around shouting or bragging about any side work
but I would not make it a secret or hide it. That just raises a lot of
questions.

I have even seen companies allow - the employee to use company equipment
for this type of work. as it makes the employee happy. As long as it is
after hours work and does not effect company work.

Jim P.

 

[Albert van der Horst]

The bottom line is that if you write code for a living, you have to deal with
the idea that at any time, for any reason, a past, present or future employer
(or anyone else for that matter) can claim ownership of your idea. When that
happens (if it ever does) you'll have to determine then whether it's worth
fighting for.

In case the idea is there before you are employed, you must pre-empt
by using a GPL copyright, and publishing.

Then if you are using the same idea at an employers you point out
that re-implementing doesn't violate copyright.
They should be happy, you being the sensible person that you are.
They will ask you to give them extra rights in writing, but you
should simply refuse to do so.
There will be a lot of blather and booh's, but they will have to
- use the original and accept their code becomes GPL-ed
- believe you are sensible and will never try to
sue them, than re-implement
or
- give up

This is of course because published GPL code is effectively owned
and defended by the public, which includes IBM, a company with
deep pockets and good lawyers.

Grant Wagner <[email protected]>

Groetjes Albert


--

 

[Flash Gordon]

In case the idea is there before you are employed, you must pre-empt
by using a GPL copyright, and publishing.

Then if you are using the same idea at an employers you point out
that re-implementing doesn't violate copyright.
They should be happy, you being the sensible person that you are.
They will ask you to give them extra rights in writing, but you
should simply refuse to do so.

A lot of companies will simply refuse to use code that means they have
to GPL their products. They would probably not continue to employ
someone who gave that as the only option.

There will be a lot of blather and booh's, but they will have to
- use the original and accept their code becomes GPL-ed
- believe you are sensible and will never try to
sue them, than re-implement
or
- give up

This is of course because published GPL code is effectively owned
and defended by the public, which includes IBM, a company with
deep pockets and good lawyers.

This is incorrect. The public does *not* own GPL code, the copyright
owners do. The copyright owners are therefor free to release identical
code under another licence or sell it if they wish. Look at Cygwin and
QT for two examples of code available both under GPL and commercial
licenses, there are others.

 

[Keith Thompson]

This is of course because published GPL code is effectively owned
and defended by the public, which includes IBM, a company with
deep pockets and good lawyers.

If you insist on posting legal advice to Usenet, please either post
*correct* legal advice, or post it to a newsgroup where it's topical.

 

[Jim P]

Enough of this IP argument.

and about prior work and Home / Hobby work.

The reason that I am hired is that I have a long history of prior skills
and knowledge. This is not just related to Software and programming.

But my skills in hardware design, In microprocessor design, Analog
designs. and over all system designs.

These skills, I carry with me to any new job. I respect the market place
of the prior work and technology directly related to that project. But
because I learn how to use the Motorola (FreeScale) MC68HC908AZ60 micro
does not mean that I can not use that micro in an other project.

or claim prior knowledge and demand IP protection and rights. It is
these skills that get me hired for the next project.

It is the skills that I have, the tools that I have learned and
developed that get me the job over a kid just out of school with an
empty toolbox of tricks - - - - and then demand that I get a license to
allow them to use these tricks and tools of the trade. That is right-
they are simply the tools of the trade. Would you hire a person to do
your floors and he has never done a floor before. - - my lady friend
hired a person to do her deck. It turns out it was his second deck that
he ever did. - - oh boy called learning on the job. - -

If all you have done is build a set of tools and they are nothing more
than the tools of the trade. and expect them to pay for that. Forget
it. You will come off wrong. - - -

They also expect you to know the language or able to pick it up fast.
That is called tools of the trade.

And note that the tools or concepts or tricks carry from one language to
an other. Just as my real time monitor for the 65C02 micro was done in
Assembly and then redone in C for the 80C552 micro and now the 68HC908
series in C. and is going thou an other evolution in terms of
performance and features. and I can demand a license and royality for
this. - - - not really it is simply one of the tools of the trade.

Just as the guy that did her deck, He had the nail guns and saws. Just
did not know how to use them or design the deck. (30% extra wood in the
deck) and many other aspects were wrong. - - even blocking the faucet so
that it is hard to use.

We are expected to have experience and thus prior work and skills. and
code ideas and concepts.

-------------------

so what is done on the side or as a hobby or prior has to be more than
just tools of the trade. It has to be something that was clearly done
prior to work at the company and this means mentioned up front. Any home
or side or hobby work must clearly be not related to your job or company
market place. Or it is the companies, Unless you make an arrangement to
do a task on the side for them. and they know it is going on and it is
on your time. Again the prior arrangement. TO do it and then try to
sell it to the company is like trying to hold them up.

I have a renter in my house that tried this. Got hired by a company full
time and then designed something for them to sell and demanded
royalities on it. The company balked - - as they would - - his
employment was to design things for them to sell. Then he would go to
work and in his anger just sit and do nothing all day. After a while
they let him go. So he sued them and that just made them mad at him.
The product was small % of their total sales so they dropped it and
refused to pay him, His attorney was demanding Millions - - He was
willing to accept less when they balked. He fired the attorney and then
tried to talk to them about it and lower number. They refused to deal
with him any more. It cost him a lot more than it cost them. and they
knew that.

But he was hired to design for them. Just like if I was an engine
designer for General Motors. Am I to expect to get a royality from my
work. A raise if I do a good job, A bonus if I do a real good job or
something special or other reward but not for simply doing my job. This
requires a person to be thinking about work more than simply being a 8
to 5 employee. And turns off work at the door.

I say this as a person that has patents in my name and more applied for
at this point in time. And guess what - the company made sure that they
get the rights to the patents. So as I can not hold them hostage and
demand high royalites or other compensation after they spend millions
bringing the product into production. - - - that is called putting a gun
to their head. and of course they will not like that and it will leave a
level of resentment.

But they will reward a person for this. Raises. They do not want this
guy to leave. If he can do this - - why let him leave and work for
someone else and maybe a company that competes against them. In my case
caused lots of more consulting work for the companies that I worked for.

Will a person that simply looks as his job as 8 to 5 and can't wait to
go home at night and turns of work at the door going to come up with the
type of ideas and thoughts that will drive a company forward. I do not
think so. His mind is else where.

This is life, face it, it is this way for a reason and not just because
companies want it that way. But because it works.

Jim P.

 

[Ben Pfaff]

Enough of this IP argument.

and about prior work and Home / Hobby work.

Yes, I agree.

Do you have a question about Borland Delphi, C, C++, Java, and
Pascal?

 

[Ann]

What happens if you pretend you don't have any code at home and just
write new code at work. They should think you are a good programmer
because your new code will have less bugs; strive to make it a little
better than your home stuff.

 

[Paul L Daniels]

because your new code will have less bugs; strive to make it a little
better than your home stuff.

Not a bad idea really. Your office/work gets cleaner (?) code and you
get paid. Not sure how they'd react if they see that your work code
appears as a derivative of your home code --- should they ever audit.

Paul.

 

[Keith Thompson]

What happens if you pretend you don't have any code at home and just
write new code at work. They should think you are a good programmer
because your new code will have less bugs; strive to make it a little
better than your home stuff.

We have no idea what happens.

Do you have a question about C, C++, or Java?

 

[Jim P]

Yes, I agree.

Do you have a question about Borland Delphi, C, C++, Java, and
Pascal?

Not at the momment - was just responding to others comments. Which was
started by Skybuck

Jim P.

 

[Chris Hills]

If you insist on posting legal advice to Usenet, please either post
*correct* legal advice, or post it to a newsgroup where it's topical.

And state which jusistiction (you think) you are talking about. Not all
in the NG are in the UK some might be looking at forigen laws which do
not apply here


/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
\/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills Staffs England /\/\/\/\/\
/\/\/ (e-mail address removed) www.phaedsys.org \/\/
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

 

[Phillip Lord]

Albert> In case the idea is there before you are employed, you must
Albert> pre-empt by using a GPL copyright, and publishing.


GPL is not copyright. It's a license. You can only put GPL on
something that you own the copyright off. It you write some code, but
someone else owns the copyright, even if you stick a GPL on it, they
can take it off again. More over, they could sue you for releasing
their software, even it your wrote it, without their permission.

If you want to release code as GPL and you work for someone else, then
you need to get an employer disclaimer of rights, which say "We don't
own this code, we are happy for it be released as GPL".

Albert> This is of course because published GPL code is effectively
Albert> owned and defended by the public, which includes IBM, a
Albert> company with deep pockets and good lawyers.

They might defend the license. They are not going to defend your usage
of it.

Phil

 

[Christian Bau]

In case the idea is there before you are employed, you must pre-empt
by using a GPL copyright, and publishing.

Then if you are using the same idea at an employers you point out
that re-implementing doesn't violate copyright.
They should be happy, you being the sensible person that you are.
They will ask you to give them extra rights in writing, but you
should simply refuse to do so.
There will be a lot of blather and booh's, but they will have to
- use the original and accept their code becomes GPL-ed
- believe you are sensible and will never try to
sue them, than re-implement
or
- give up

This is nonsense.

A company is not allowed to use someone elses copyrighted code without
the permission of the copyright holder.

In the case that the copyright holder licenses the code under the GPL,
the copyright holder is absolutely free to license the same code under
any other license. In the situation that you describe, the copyright
holder gives the company permission to use the code - with no strings
attached. If there is a contract that allows the company to use your
code, then they have your permission to use it, and therefore it doesn't
make the slightest difference whether the code is licensed under GPL or
not.

However, if you start with software licensed under GPL, and modify it,
then you have no right to allow others the use of the derived work under
any different terms, so it will be impossible for the company to lay
their grubby hands on it. The only exception would be if _all_ copyright
holders are employed by the same company and have signed the same kind
of contract.

 

[Albert van der Horst]

This is incorrect. The public does *not* own GPL code, the copyright
owners do. The copyright owners are therefor free to release identical
code under another licence or sell it if they wish. Look at Cygwin and
QT for two examples of code available both under GPL and commercial
licenses, there are others.

You turn my carefully worded phrases upside down.
By GPL-ing my code, I do the best I can to give the public
full control of my code. That is what I mean by "effectively".
And indeed the public holds a stake at my code, probably more than
I do.

What you say about selling by the autor is only very partially true.
If I am the only contributor to code, I can rerelease under a different
copyright. I can do nothing if I'm a significant contributor,
but others are also. This is, of course, the case with practically
all significant sources. So I restate: "the public effectively
owns the GPL-code." And I would add: "the companies with the best
lawyers effectively own public domain code.".

Groetjes Albert.


--

 

[Andrew Koenig]

You turn my carefully worded phrases upside down.
By GPL-ing my code, I do the best I can to give the public
full control of my code. That is what I mean by "effectively".
And indeed the public holds a stake at my code, probably more than
I do.

This is incorrect. By GPL-ing your code, you give the public *no* control
over it. If you wanted to give the public control over it, you would place
it in the public domain.

If you GPL code, you are (still) the only one who controls it, because you
and you alone have the option of making the code available under different
terms.

 

[Keith Thompson]

You turn my carefully worded phrases upside down.
By GPL-ing my code, I do the best I can to give the public
full control of my code. That is what I mean by "effectively".
And indeed the public holds a stake at my code, probably more than
I do.

[...]

I believe this is incorrect. It's also off-topic in all five of the
newsgroups to which it is being posted.

The GPL can be discussed in gnu.misc.discuss. Software IP issues can
be discussed in misc.legal.computing.

Did you have a question about Borland Delphi, C, C++, Java, or Pascal?

 

[JeffS]

It seems to me that most programmers, especially contractors who go
from job to job, reuse code they either did as a hobby or wrote for
some other employer. It's just that they don't copy and paste it line
by line, they modify it for the most current use, and obfuscate it as
well. It also seems that this practice would have to be a complete
necessity in order to be productive, or at least get better over time.
Imagine if every coder completely re-invented the wheel from scratch
with every job opportunity. That would be ridiculous. Plus, an
employer, just because they paid you to write code, has no monopoly
over your knowledge, unless it's a company "trade secret". However,
in programming, in spite of all the ridiculous patents going on out
there, there are no real "trade secrets", in terms of algorithms or
coding techniques.

I'm sure that on a pure legal basis I'm probably at least partially
wrong. However, I'm also quite sure that code reuse is extremely
common amongst coders. They just don't tell anyone about what code
they are reusing, and I'm sure that employers are not probing their
coders for what code they are reusing. It's kind of a "don't ask,
don't tell" situation, and any potential IP or patent infringement is
looked upon like "J" walking is looked upon. I am utterly convinced
that this is the way it is, based on personal experience, people I
know, and the fact that the alternative would mean that programmers
could only take one job their entire lives, and software innovation
would completely stagnate. To put another way - to have intellectual
capital kept under IP/patent wraps would have meant that human beings
would still be in caves.

 

[JeffS]

A good, safe bet is to make any public hobby code published under a BSD
style license. With code written under the BSD license, the code can
be used for anything with no restrictions, so long as the user
understands there is no warranty and the original author is given
credit.

 

[Bob Hairgrove]

It seems to me that most programmers, especially contractors who go
from job to job, reuse code they either did as a hobby or wrote for
some other employer. It's just that they don't copy and paste it line
by line, they modify it for the most current use, and obfuscate it as
well.

[big snip]

IANAL, but some things simply aren't patentable or subject to
copyright. Who has the patent on white flour? Salt? Butter? Put them
together in the right proportions, throw in a little yeast and some
"secret ingredient", then maybe you come up with a recipe for bread
which *is* patentable.

Everybody uses and reuses things like the quick sort algorithm. If you
write your own implementation of it, nobody can enforce ownership of
the IP because it's merely a wheel, and one that has been used and
reused many times over again. Nobody ever invented the wheel, it's
just always been there ... the same thing probably applies to things
like smart pointers, except that no one has come up with one single
version that pleases all the people all the time.

My point is that to enforce patents or copyright, it is necessary to
prove that the design of a product, and not necessarily the
ingredients which go into the making, are original and innovative in
nature. An entire operating system can be patentable and still be
written with code which isn't.

 

[Keith Thompson]

[snip]

[big snip]

IANAL

[bigger snip]

If you're not a laywer, why are you giving legal advice?

In particular, why are you giving legal advice in multiple newsgroups,
when it's off-topic in *all* of them?