Re: Re: How do you view your employment?

Particularly in this economy, it's going to be downright impossible (not to mention hazardous) to ask for an adaptation of an existing IP contract.

Realistically, what's the worst that could happen if you were to ask?

My guess is that they'd say no, and perhaps pay extra attention to what you were up to for a while.

If that's true, then you risk very little by asking. One of the guys in my group went to the company president a while back to get sign-off to work on a particular Open Source project. He persisted in the face of some minor flack, and eventually got written permission. (In this particular case, we were using some Open Source technology, and we were able to make the argument that it was worth to not have to reapply our bug fixes each time the techology was updated).

You often risk very little by asking. Sales and Marketing folks know this -- they get told "no" a lot, but they still get the hot dates.

Comment on Re: Re: How do you view your employment?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Re: Re: How do you view your employment? by fuzzyping (Chaplain) on Mar 21, 2002 at 05:51 UTC
The worst? I think tilly has shown us the worst case. Since my donations to the community aren't necessarily as profound as his, I can't compare directly. However, I feel that I would face the possibility of losing rights to all the code I've developed on my own time during the tenure of my employment. Isn't that what this dilemma has taught us? And isn't that bad enough? -fuzzyping	[reply]