The ambiguity of internal software
-
I certainly agree that using the company you work for to launch your own software is bad karma.
James R. Twine wrote:
When you hire someone to build a deck for you, you own the deck - they cannot just show up and take it off your house and leave with it.
This is true, but there is no problem with that company building a similar deck on someone else's home. The only reason the company hires a developer to write the software versus just buying something off the shelf is they get 100% of what they want and don't pay for features they aren't going to use. Even after leaving the company, who is to say that my product is not the same, or different for that matter. I may not be able to memorize the code, but I certainly could produce the same effect given time to write it; even from a clean work environment. Most of the ideas that produced the software were my original ideas. In the end, I feel like this is very grey territory. On one hand, there could be a legal argument over what I am considering, on the other whether it is "right" or not to do so regardless of legality.
Netblue wrote:
James R. Twine wrote: When you hire someone to build a deck for you, you own the deck - they cannot just show up and take it off your house and leave with it. This is true, but there is no problem with that company building a similar deck on someone else's home.
True as well, unless the deck had a specific design that you were responsible for. :) I do not feel that there can really be anything wrong with designing a product after you leave work that may or may not be similar to what you have done before. Every aspect of code you write today has something to do with code you wrote in the past (likely at other companies/clients), be it how you indent, naming conventions you use, GUI design, to functionality and features of a product. For example, if you worked on the editor component for VS, you would learn what features really enhance the usability of editors, and if you later designed one yourself someplace else, you would likely include aspects of what you learned before. Not because it is theft, but because it is Good Software. Just because I wrote an expression parser and evaluator in the past for a specific company does not mean that they automatically have claims on one I write in the future, even if the functionality is similar. Things that you learn become part of your "internal developer's toolbox" in a sense. But I stray from the point -- doing outside work, regardless of being related to what you do on the company/client's time or not, should be cleared. If I did not have a specific agreement in place, I would presume that anything done on my own time still belongs to me. But IANAL, so I could be completely wrong on every point... Peace!
-=- James
Please rate this message - let me know if I helped or not! * * *If you think it costs a lot to do it right, just wait until you find out how much it costs to do it wrong!
Remember that Professional Driver on Closed Course does not mean your Dumb Ass on a Public Road!
See DeleteFXPFiles