I told my boss I had an idea for a program that could improve efficiency across much of the business, and he let me build it on company time. In the long term, he wanted to be able to sell it to other companies. However, the program never got implemented due to personnel mismanagement, and I’d rather be able to post it on my github under a free licence so I can use it as a resume item, and at least someone would have the chance to actually use it. It’s all still in my head, and I could write it again if I wanted. If I do, is it illegal to publish it? What if I write it in a different language? Do I need to change the variable names? I did plenty of research and planning on company time to build it, and it’s not like I can research it again, it’s all still in my head.
Change the font and you are good to go.
Its funny but you forgot the /s
But I didn’t want him to get in trouble by tagging it
/Serious
Haha.
Ok you win. ;)
Not a lawyer, but worked closely with them in the past. It REALLY depends on your employment contract. Changing variable names and language still makes it a derivative work, so it would depend on the original license. I’m assuming it doesn’t have a license which would mean either you or the company owns the copyright: depends on your employment contract. Whether you’re a contractor or full time also affects ownership.
Without ownership or a license, you do not have the legal right to copy the work or make a derivative of it.
I’m not clear on whether you actually wrote any code though. If that’s the case (that no code was written) then I’m not really sure how that works out. If you do post it and they find out, AND they’re mad about it, you could definitely get fired. I’m not sure if there could also be legal trouble or not.
If you need it for a resume item, you can just list it on your resume and talk about it. You could also implement it on your own time (but not share it until you’re sure you’re safe from legal action), that way you could talk about tradeoffs you’ve made, etc. in the real implementation.
In general, if you’re not sure and you’re worried about getting sued, you should ask a lawyer.
I mean, at the risk of being obvious, take your contract to a lawyer or two and ask them.
Did they license the code?
Is there a clause in your employment agreement about the company owning anything you create? IBM does this, and it’s total bullshit.
In many countries, code written on company time, with company hardware and as part of the job will automatically assign copyright to the company. It doesn’t need an explicit clause but many companies add it anyway.
This is different from the company owning every piece of code you write, which I don’t condone. But in this particular case OP has a clear conflict of interest.
Nah, what they’re referring to is about stuff created in your own time, on your own kit. It’s absolutely bullshit but somehow legal.
Not a lawyer but from my understanding of intellectual property: You wrote it on company time, so it is the companies code. Publishing it without explicit approval would be copyright infringement.
The code on the computer isn’t what I would be publishing. I would be publishing the memories in my head, which I had written down again
Doesn’t matter if you write it in code or chisel it on a stone tablet. It is still the companies intellectual property.
Think of it this way: You film a movie which for whatever reason doesn’t get published. This doesn’t give you the permission to write a book containing the same story, just in writing. The story is still owned by the film studio. The same reason applies to published material: You are not allowed to write a Star Wars story without approval from Disney, the copyright holder. Fan fiction exists in a gray zone for exact this reason.
You can absolutely write a Star Wars knockoff, though. You just can’t call it that. There’s some gray line in there somewhere.
You’re sort of missing the point. Two programming implementations are never the same if you rewrite them from scratch for anything but the most trivial program. It wouldn’t be a copy of the original and it would have a unique, if similar, implementation. It’s not as clear cut as you suggest (at least not for the reasons you suggest, but IANAL.)
It is not about the code line by line, but the functionality that OP created for their employer. And yes it is not clear-cut in the sense that in Oracle vs. Google it was AFAIK decided that the idea of the
toStringMethod does not fall under copyright. However, a software that fills a specific need for a company and is then re-implemented/released by an employee? You can bet your ass you are in for at least a lengthy battle in court.Yeah being right doesn’t protect you from a company firing your ass and suing you
Legally it is quite clear. Taking a description of a closed source program and writing a new one is ok in most cases (unless that description is API docs - see Cisco vs Arista). Taking a look at closed source software and then implementing your own version is poison as far as OSS goes. OP implemented the first version, so that’s already a problem. They may get away is they describe what the program does to someone else and let them implement it, but OP would not be able to touch the source code
Having seen original source code hasn’t been an issue in previous cases where the reimplementation was done in another language with the changes one would expect coding up something a second time, I believe
I agree. Particularly because it’s less about the truth and more about what can be proven in court. But even more, they don’t want to pay a lawyer a bunch of money to defend this even if you could prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt. You can tell by the way they didn’t want to pay a lawyer to answer this question.
If you rewrite it in a clean-room approach and another language it will most likely not be in breach of copyright.
But there are many other aspects where you may be at fault: breaking confidentiality, using trade secrets, non-disclosure, non-compete etc.
My advice would be to have an honest discussion with the company owner and ask for the permission to open the code under a permissive license. Be prepared to explain what the advantages would be for the company, beyond “the code is just sitting there”. Be prepared to drop it if they say no.
If you go ahead it is quite possible you will be sued. Make sure you’re willing to risk it and spend time and money defending your project.
–Not legal advice-- Except they can’t do clean-room development because copyright is viral. If they had access to the copyrighted source, any code they write on the matter, if it coincides with the copyrighted one to some extent, can be pursued for copyright claims (IBM v. Microsoft). For example, when there’s a leak of Windows source, ReactOS devs get super scared, because it really puts them on the line. Another example is Nouveau, which can’t accept anyone who has worked at NVIDIA. That being said, the company was not intending to do anything with it, so they can’t claim damages; ergo, OP is completely safe.
I’m not a he
Fixed.
Don’t copy the code directly from any company assets. There are plenty of ways to track code and data theft these days, so don’t even attempt it. I am just saying that as a friendly reminder.
Honestly, there is not much that a company can do unless they specially own the business logic of what you are doing. Are there aspects to the code that apply to internal proprietary software? That probably isn’t wise to share.
While I am not a lawyer, a general rule of thumb is that if you think you might be stealing something, you probably are. Anything you do on company time, is technically owned by that company.
If your previous work gets discarded by that company, never talk about it again. Never code it again for that company and just let the idea die, as far as that company is concerned. Independently resurrect the idea at a later date.
Nobody here can really tell you what to do, btw. Quite honestly, if you think that you can claim ownership of what you have, pay a few hundred bucks for a consultation with a lawyer.
Good sensible advice right here ^
Even worse: Depending on (local or national) law, it may be the company’s property, even if written in personal time. Especially if the code is in competition with your work.
Yes, it’s ass-backwards, but that’s how it is in some places.
If you implement it from fresh then it is a new program. What matters is what your contract says about what you produce - some contracts pay claim to anything you make even outside of working hours.
Also if you rewrite it, while technically it is a fresh project if there are substantial similarities in how you implement it there could be an argument made that you have reused code that belongs to the company. Even if that is technical false it could be something you’d have to defend sometime in the future. As others have said, implementing the program in a different language and using a different methodology wherever possible should help protect against that.
I think the advice others have given that you should review your contract with a lawyer is sound even if this will be FOSS. It’s mainly about ensuring you don’t inadvertently open yourself to potential legal repercussions down the line, even if your employers at the moment seem benign. If you do work for a company that lays claim to everything you produce even in your off hours then I would strongly recommend you consider leaving or an exit plan, particularly if you are the sort of person who would be working on your own projects for fun or even your own business ventures.
The problem is I learned how to write good code at university and I used what I learned to inform the software architecture. I could write garbage that gets the same job done but isn’t maintainable, except for the fact that I want to show this off as a display of my skill. I already did the best I could do on the company clock. If I do the best I can do again, it’ll be the same. I can’t make significant changes outside of language, variables, and dependencies, because then it wouldn’t be as good. The structure I made for the company is simply good design. I don’t remember every detail of the structure, but if I tried to rebuild it I’d get the same result. This is a problem with a correct answer.
Writing it in a different language should be enough to dodge copyright law as it is a completely different implementation utilising different dependency technologies.
Won’t do shit against patents or trade secrets though, and your program could be covered by both. Also, as others have stated, check your contract for abusive (imo) but legally permissible code copyright clauses, such as ‘everything you make in your spare time is ours’
– Not legal advice-- If you have evidence that it got scrapped for good, even if it’s copyright infringement, they can’t claim any damages. They, at best, can DMCA GitHub, but you’re VERY unlikely to get sentenced guilty in a trial (in the event of one, which won’t ever happen because they know).
Walter Bright had a lot of back and forth over the Digital Mars C compiler and Symantec.
IANAL and you really should ask a lawyer about this. The answer very much depends on your work contract and country of residence (the latter due to the fact that some generic contracts’ statements might be legally unenforceable in specific jurisdictions).
I’ll throw in a random fact: the contract might say that whatever you write as a programmer is still company’s property even off the clock and it will be legal in some US states.
Just change the language used to write it, if possible.
That’s practical, but not so sound, advice. IANAL, yet… I remember when Julia lang was gaining traction that many R lang programmers wanted to port their favorite packages. If they were to look at the R sources (under GPL) to write the Julia version to be released under MIT license, they would be violating the GPL. Or there was a risk, at least. Of course, this case is different because the first and original version is not GPL. But this came to mind. Anyway, I suppose that it all boils down to how much OP feels like their employer (boss or anyone with power in the company) will be a son-of-a-cop and really come forward to court against him… I mean, that’s in the first place. Then, comes the legal advice, as to how much of a case can be made, and what do we expect a judge would see it…
Not a him
their
not a him
?
Anyway, I suppose that it all boils down to how much OP feels like their employer (boss or anyone with power in the company) will be a son-of-a-cop and really come forward to court against him
Who would the boss be coming forward in court against except for me?
The only reaction to a long advice post is bitching about pronouns? Society is fucked.
My gender is more important to me than some random program. I can make a program whenever I want, but I’ve only got one gender.
Sorry, I hope you understand that was just an error on my behalf most probably related to being tired and typing in multiple languages sometimes can be a strainer.
deleted by creator
Right now there are huge financial interests in the tech sector arguing that anything output from a chat bot is non-copyright protected and non-infringing on the copyright of the training data. So use one of them to get something close to a working idea of the program and then edit that to create your self owned copyright of your program.
If you go this route, bear in mind you also have to prove it came from a chat bot. So don’t delete the prompt or output any time soon!
The future lawsuits from this sort of thing will be interesting.
Richard Stallman would encourage you to publish it.
check carefully what you signed. If you didn’t sign anything saying otherwise, there’s nothing to prevent you from doing it.
If there’s something, you could still work around it (e.g. remove company secrets).
If the resulting product is provable better, then it’s objectively not the same thing you did for your boss.
After checking all of this, your local FSF might give you free legal advice to get going (keep all notes/correspondence secure for later if anything comes up. It proves you tried to act responsibly).
Ask your boss.
I would never rely on the opinion of my boss when the question is what my rights are. They’re usually not a lawyer and their interests are often contrary to mine.
I mean ask (or more: convince) your boss for permission to make the code publicly available.
It’s usually much easier to just ask for what you want before getting lawyers involved.
I’ve found that getting people to sign a contract is much more difficult than you’re making it out to be. A verbal agreement from your boss isn’t worth shit later when you’d need it to hold up.
Where did I say verbal?
I’ll restate. Getting something in writing isn’t easy (and has high potential to involve lawyers). And verbal agreement’s aren’t worth your time. So your advice isn’t the simple thing you’re presenting.
