Re: tlug: Software laws

["Scott M. Stone" <sstone@example.com>]

On Thu, 27 Apr 2000, Jonathan Byrne wrote:

> First and foremost, that will be governed by any contractual agreements
> that exist between you and your employer.  Mine essentially says that
> if it's materially related to your job duties or our business, it's
> the company's.  Otherwise, it's mine.  That's really a pretty generous
> policy, I think.  To be sure, there are companies which have policies
> essentially stating that anything you invent or write while you
> work there belongs to them, period.
> 
> IANAL, but if your company has no explicit policies regarding that
> and you write something on your own that isn't part of some project
> you're working on for the company, or substantially related to
> that project, they would probably have a hard time claiming they
> owned it.

well, in the USA the standard 'intellectual property' agreement states
that anything that you develop while working for a company belongs to that
company, if you used company resources to do it.  At least that's how I
understand it... anyone care to differ with this?

exceptions (at least in the USA):

1) you work for a Linux/other open source company and the code you write
is released under the GPL.  ie, the turbolinux stuff that I wrote is all
GPL, so I can re-use that code at will, since all of my personal
programming is GPL or compatible license (BSD) anyway.



--------------------------
Scott M. Stone, CCNA <sstone@example.com>
UNIX Systems and Network Engineer
Taos - The SysAdmin Company 

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