[Gllug] "Open source has its own problems" - article in Computing

[Jason Clifford]

On Thu, 4 Aug 2005, Admin wrote:

> Normally IP rights are vested in the company you work for if
> 
> A. You work in company time
> or
> B. You use company equipment
> or
> C. It relates to skills/ideas you gained while working for that company.

The latter of these is not true. Ideas are not owned by the company except 
to the extent that a specific implementation may be protected by patent so 
long as it is a physical object.

Skills do not belong to the company at all.

> I work for an investment bank, if I were to write an OSS share trading 
> application as a result of ideas gained in my work that would be the IP 
> of the company.

Not if you did the development outside your employment, unless you are 
employed within certain states of the USA.

>  However if I extend the eclipse IDE with a plug-in for 
> PHP at home on my PC that would not. However there is a grey area, what 
> happens if I decide to write a multi-platform scheduler and we just 
> happen to need one where I work.

Unless you are doing it has part of your employment (ie there may be clean 
room issues) or you use your employers time or equipment they have no 
claim to your work unless you are in certain states of the USA.

> As for the 1980's gaming industry. Lots of rubbish games were churned 
> out but that was as much the fault of the publishing companies, not the 
> developers. Nothing hit the shops without someone agreeing to distribute 
> it and yes the big companies of today were those bedroom companies of 
> the 1980s. EA Games (although a bigger concern) started on the C64 and 
> Spectrum and many others have developed into companies writing games for 
> the consoles.

Does anyone really believe that most games released these days by 
corporate software houses are anything but rubbish?

Jason Clifford
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