Ben Loftin wrote:
Hi all,
I'm trying to get other people's perspective/experiences on using GPL
while working for a company. Upon employment I've signed an IP
agreement that has the clause
"Agrees [employee] that the copyright to any copyrightable
material generated by the Employee during the course of employment
shall be owned by the Company in accordance with established legal
precedents in respect of "Works Made for Hire"."
It appears I cannot work on GPL projects unless I get written
exemption by employer (not likely) although I will try. Is anybody
else in this type of agreement, do you know if you are? Am I
misinterpreting and gnuradio work would not count under some precedent
in "Works Made for Hire"?
Technically, if you 'use' GPL'd items in your 'company's product, that
may make the company liable for the GPL. Hence, some companies
disallow their empolyees to use GPL'd software in company products.
There's the BSD license, and Net/Free-BSD which does not have the GPL
requirements of 'open source'... however, even there, packages acquired
which go beyond the core BSD set, may get you into GPL
country.
(* There have been a number of companies in the linux kernel world which
have not re-released their soruces, all the while using
the GPL software for their company gain. I have never heard of any
company being sued over this, and who would take up the
suite... perhaps someone has, but I don't recall such.)
Also, I believe, and this is where a lawyer may be needed, is that the
'work for hire' covers only what you do 'at work', 'on behalf, under the
direction' of
the employer, or for which equipment or services owned/paided for by the
employer, were used by you.
If you have your home PC using your own paid for DSL/Cable connection,
etc, your own sofware, your own e-mail account, etc.etc.etc...
Then it is yours. Real muddy areas are if what you do 'at work' matches
very closely to what you do at home, such as signal processing
implementations,
the only difference being that at home you used FORTRAN and punch cards,
whereas at work you used APL and a modern Cathode Ray Tube
with fancy upper and lower case character keyboard...
Less muddy is if you're a grocerystore clerk, and you develop
yet-another-basic-interpreter-that-becomes-the-next-best-thing-since-sliced-bread...
John Clark
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