On Thu, 16 Oct 2003, Howard M. Lewis Ship wrote:
> Well, I seem to have created a "situation" with HiveMind. > > My employers, WebCT, have pointed out that, really, HiveMind should have > originated officially from their control; despite the weeks of thought > that led up to HiveMind, despite the initial work begin done "off > company time", the fact is that by ordinary employment standards, I did > not have the right to release HiveMind the way I did. Sucks doesn't it. I spent the better part of 2 years trying to get an IP agreement that didn't utterly dominate my code. I think this is why most Apache committers are either with Sun/IBM [who are Apache friendly] or for consultancies [who are in a better position to appreciate the payback from Apache things]. The main part I have is that I have to ask permission to go open source with anything created at work, and that I have to ask for permission to 'work' for anyone. Also, the strict-IP parts of the agreement were lessened to only concern the companies core-business area and not anything to do with my job ['Java Developer']. > Fortunately, they are being very good natured about it ... what they > want is appropriate recognition. I'm keen to give it to them ... it > helps both of us (they are hip to the marketing potential of open source > contributions, I'm hip to the marketing potential of directly > referencing WebCT and Vista). I'm also looking forward to my future as a > contractor, when "down time" (between jobs) is down time (not anyone > else's property). Would be interesting to hear how this works for contractors. If I'm on a contract to company X, do I have to sign something saying I can't work for any other company and any idea I have or skill I learn at company X is owned by company X. Somehow I suspect not :) > I'm looking for advice on what's appropriate. I'm thinking of something > on the front page of the HiveMind site that clearly details the > origination of HiveMind within WebCT. Something a bit more substantial > than the blurb on the XMLBeans site that points back to BEA, I think. > > Any ideas? Well, a first one is to thank WebCT for their support of the project. You can go a bit over the top perhaps, 'none of this could have happened without the support of WebCT' etc. One of the problems with this is that it's you speaking for the project and the project is meant to be a community. Still, a thankyou could be worded accordingly and involve a history of Hivemind. I think this is pretty fair and just. Hen --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
