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.
Check your employment contract. If that includes an NDA or a confidentiality agreement, the company may own your design as well as any code produced. Writing the program from scratch a second time may still end up being company property.
Given that they didn’t put your program into production, it’s unlikely they would pursue you legally for releasing a new version on your own.
NDAs/confidentiality agreements have to be specified in the employment contract or other signed paperwork?
In the past I’ve joked with my boss that I’m not obligated by NDAs and can say what I want to others. It was a joke but realistically I don’t believe I am because not a word of NDA/confidentiality is in my contract, nor have I signed any other paperwork with it in. But the boss seems to think I am restricted by NDA.
There are NDAs, and privileged information. You might not be under an NDA, but depending on where you live you might have constraints on privileged information.
IANAL but i’m pretty sure that even without an NDA anything you develop on the job is considered IP of the company. However, as long as it’s not a blatant copy paste(a rewrite), it’s hard to legally enforce that because they have to prove damages. Meaning that if they shelfed the idea/program, even if it’s a blatant copy paste they can’t do anything.
even if it’s a blatant copy paste they can’t do anything.
They can sack you.
Basically, they won’t bother sueing you unless you end up making millions off it
But at that point the program will likely not even be reminiscent of its original form
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. ;)
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).
Write it down for now so you do not lose the memory if it is so precious to you. Maybe it will be even better the next time coding it. I think many coders have a “loose copy” or a “code gist” of previous versions of their favorites codes around. I never created a code that I framed and hanged on my wall, but some came close. I would not publish it under your real name any time soon. At least not as long as you work in that company +1-2y. If you choose to publish it in the next 6 month under a very different name, in another account, with another repo name, because you love FOSS so much, and it looks different to the original code in format and style (and the presentation of data = frontend), then I see no problem. Just two guys having a similar idea. Not a lawyer though.
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.
– 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).
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
This is one of those things where you have to read your employment contract.
If your main job involves generating intellectual property (code, or research or something else) and you live in the US there’s probably a clause saying you can’t do this without permission. Otherwise, it’s probably fine.
However, if you’re in the US, they can still fire you whenever they feel like, so if you think this might seriously piss your company off and you need your job, you might want to ask permission first.
Walter Bright had a lot of back and forth over the Digital Mars C compiler and Symantec.
The only real answer here is talk to an actual lawyer rather than a bunch of Joe Blows on the internet. Case in point: Laws will vary depending on country and you haven’t specified what country you’re in. The set of laws you’re subject to are possibly entirely different than the set of laws each commenter here is familiar with. Never take legal advice from the internet.
But if you’re only looking to publish the source code as a resume item, it’s not worth the legal exposure or time/money to talk to a lawyer. Find something else to write and put on your resume.
Without a non-compete clause, I imagine if you changed it enough you’d be alright.
I personally know someone that has started essentially the same company multiple times, and just keeps selling the companies off. It’s different software each time, but it does essentially the same thing.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I mean ask (or more: convince) your boss for permission to make the code publicly available.
It depends in the country you are.
If you want to show of your skills, why not write an article about it. This way you don’t publish company property (maybe only snippets of code) and the viewer can read your reasons on why you made certain decisions.
But do not do this without consent of the company. If the company likes it, you could even start your article something along the lines of “here at %company% we like to write good code…”. Than it is a win-win. I see this a lot on sites like medium.com
