Re^2: What I am paid for

Code you write at home on your own equipment belongs to you -- although I've heard of contracts where that isn't the case.

Commonsense would suggest this would be the case, but a number of people have told me that this is not true in the US. By default anything you create is owned by your employer unless you get them to disclaim ownership in writing.

I don't live in the US and I am not a lawyer.

Comment on Re^2: What I am paid for

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Re^3: What I am paid for by talexb (Chancellor) on Mar 07, 2010 at 21:50 UTC
Right -- I didn't want to go off on a tangent and use up more bandwidth about this, but I have heard of Employment Contracts that basically say anything you write belongs to your employer. A classic tale about this is tilly's node Professional Employees and Works for Hire. Alex / talexb / Toronto Team website: Forex Chart Monkey, Forex Technical Analysis and Pickpocket Prevention "Groklaw is the open-source mentality applied to legal research" ~ Linus Torvalds	[reply]
Re^4: What I am paid for by mscharrer (Hermit) on Mar 08, 2010 at 09:51 UTC
Do you mean anything related to your professional work? Or does thing anything also covers completely unrelated own OOS projects of the employee?	[reply]
Re^5: What I am paid for by dsheroh (Monsignor) on Mar 09, 2010 at 10:47 UTC
Anything. 24/7. In some cases, it doesn't even matter if it's work-related. I've seen employment contracts in the US which, taken as written, mean that if you work as a programmer and, during an extended vacation, you design and patent a new style of hairbrush, your employer owns that patent. Now, whether those clauses are actually enforceable depends on what state you live in, but employers do routinely make such broad claims to any and all intellectual property developed by their employees, regardless of what it is or when it's created.	[reply]