2

I am a co-op at a company and I was tasked with patching Roumen Petrov's OpenSSH w/ x509 certificates patch (http://www.roumenpetrov.info/openssh/) to include one of the features in his wanted list: wildcards in Distinguished Names. On his site he says that he will gladly accept patches.

After finishing, I asked my manager to implore the higher-ups if it was possible to release the patch to the public. Unfortunately, nothing ever came from it, the higher-ups forgot about the request.

The OpenSSH & the w/ x509 patch code is under a BSD license, so we are no legal requirement to release our changes. However, as an avid user of open-source and finally able to contribute, I want to help Mr. Petrov in his efforts. There is also a benefit to my company: the patch goes upstream and we do not have to maintain it between upstream-patch-versions.

I am an employee of the company (not a contractor), and thus my work at work is property of the company, and so I cannot release it without their approval (not that I would think of it).

I am wondering if I reproduce my changes on my own time, without looking or referencing the code generated at work, whether I could then release that patch.

Note: I could not find a copy of my employment contract anywhere, so I'm going to try to get a copy of it, but until then I cannot answer any specific questions about it.

Note 2: I realize you people are not lawyers. (Who are you callin' "you people?"!)

4

4 に答える 4

10

the higher-ups forgot about the request

I would probably send a request. Something along the lines of

Dear whoever is responsible We're using open source software xyz for free in our company. In the course of my current work I have added feature which is used by our company but would be beneficial to public and I would like to submit it to open source community for inclusion in xyz. The pros of doing this are here summarize benefits that you outlined above. Let me know who is the best person to approve this. The sooner it can be submitted the sooner we don't have to maintain it.

Then keep pushing and asking until you get the approval.

于 2009-12-11T05:22:13.560 に答える
1

まず、あなたは正しいです。ここの人々はおそらく弁護士ではなく、弁護士であると主張する人々は確認するのが難しいかもしれません。StackOverflowからの法的アドバイスを信頼することは非常に危険です。

知的財産法と契約法を理解している弁護士を見つける必要があります（少なくとも）。弁護士は、あなたが強制力のある競業避止契約を結んでいるかどうかを判断するために、あなたの雇用契約（あなたが署名した、雇用の前後のすべて）を調べる必要があります。

このようなものはかなり深刻です。参照は見つかりませんが、会社独自のソフトウェアが会社のソフトウェアで汚染されるのを避けるために、通信がほとんど禁止され、お互いのコードを読むことが完全に禁止されている複数のチームを採用している会社を読んだことがあります著作権を所有していませんでした。

于 2009-12-11T05:52:08.680 に答える
1

注意する必要があります。インディアナ州の労働法がどれほど厳格かはわかりませんが、マサチューセッツ州では運が悪いでしょう。問題は、あなたがIPを見て、二次的著作物の責任を負う可能性があることです。この時点で、「クリーンルーム」パッチを作成することはほぼ不可能です。それは私が許可の紙の証跡なしで行うことを提案することではありません。

私はMITとBSDライセンスのコードの大幅に変更されたフォークを使って作業しました。私はこれらのプロジェクトを数百倍速くする方法を知っていますが、これらの技術と改善は一部の企業に優位性を与えるものです。彼らはしばしば貢献することに興味がなく、たとえそれが理にかなっているとしても、そうする必要はありません。

私の中の悪魔はとにかくそれをするように言います。私の前の同僚がしていることをして、他の誰かの名前でそれを解放してください。別の同僚は、許しを求めることは許可を求めることよりも優れていると言いました。完全な破滅のリスクのない人生の価値は何ですか？

考え直して、あなたの雇用主と話をして、実際に利益を享受してください。

于 2009-12-11T06:00:37.243 に答える
0

The tricky thing is it might be hard to prove the new work wasn't based on the work you did for your company; what an old teacher of mine called the "love boat defense" ("watch the love boat before doing your own work; anything that you write after watching such mind-draining pap is yours") won't work here. Even if the implementation is completely different but there are similarities in design, it could be considered a derivative work. If you could think of a completely new and unrelated design, you could mount a good defense in case it came to court, but it wouldn't prevent it from going to court (which is the real goal).

Of course, if your company brought you to court, they'd lose a valuable employee, so they might be hesitant to do so. Still, stefanB's advice is the safest route and keeps you on good terms with your employer.

于 2009-12-11T05:38:10.580 に答える