Re: [silk] Linguistics query
On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 7:21 AM, Udhay Shankar N ud...@pobox.com wrote: Idly wondering, and I thought the folks here might have some insight: Does the alphabet used by any Indian language have the concept of upper and lower case? (for the purposes of this query, let us explicitly exclude the Roman alphabet) Indic Scripts does not make a distinction of Upper and Lower Case. I.e Writing systems which have its roots in Brahmic script. CJKV languages do not make this distinction too -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com)) -- Ramakrishna Reddy GPG Key ID:67E226F5 Fingerprint = BA51 9241 72B9 7DBD 1A9A E717 ABB2 9BAD 67E2 26F5
[silk] Employee-Employee agreement for open source activity
Hi, A colleague wants to start an open source project and wanted to make sure our employer is ok with it. I was wondering if anyone here could point me to some templates or other resources for this kind of agreement. A quick google didn't get me anything useful. -- b
Re: [silk] Employee-Employee agreement for open source activity
On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 1:08 PM, Biju Chacko biju.cha...@gmail.com wrote: A colleague wants to start an open source project and wanted to make sure our employer is ok with it. What does the phrase is ok with it mean in this context? -- sankarshan mukhopadhyay https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan
Re: [silk] Employee-Employee agreement for open source activity
Your colleague must have an employment contract which has a clause indicating all work done for the organization is work for hire etc - and that covers work done related to the office. If this states that the company owns rights to code written during work timings -and while pursuing a task assigned by the company - then I think your friend has nothing to worry about (assuming he is working on the open source project in his own time). However, some contracts say this : organization owns all rights to work produced during the period of employment - that would be a problem - and your friend would need to take it up with the company since they could claim ownership on any open source work done on his own time. I have seen some contracts which even claim ownership on prior work done by an employee ! On 4 June 2014 13:08, Biju Chacko biju.cha...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, A colleague wants to start an open source project and wanted to make sure our employer is ok with it. I was wondering if anyone here could point me to some templates or other resources for this kind of agreement. A quick google didn't get me anything useful. -- b
[silk] Employee-Employee agreement for open source activity
I don't have a template or resources I can point to. But some things both employer and employee should consider before embarking on this: 1. Is this a brand new, from the ground up project or the open sourcing of something the company had that was previously closed? The former is marginally less complex than the latter. 2. Is the project in an area of that the employer is currently involved in? Is the employer likely to become involved in this area in the next 1|3|5|10 years? 3. Does the employer understand open source? Is employer an active supporter of open source? Is employer a beneficiary of open source? 4. Would the employee use any of the employer's resources (computers, bandwidth, electricity, office space, email address, hosting space, etc.) in developing the open source software? If not, how would the employee ensure that they are not using any resources from the employer in building this software? 5. Even though employee might be developing the software purely on an individual basis, there is a chance that the software is perceived to be from the employer rather than the employee's personal project. 6. What license does the employee plan to use for the project? Is this in the best interest of the employee? The employer? 7. What happens if someone sues the employee for the open source software? Can the employer get sucked into the dispute? 8. What happens to the employer/employee if the software turns out to be the next What's App or InstaApp? Some sort of agreement between the employer and the employee addressing the details of these would be a good starting step. Thaths On Wed Jun 04 2014 at 1:08:15 PM, Biju Chacko biju.cha...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, A colleague wants to start an open source project and wanted to make sure our employer is ok with it. I was wondering if anyone here could point me to some templates or other resources for this kind of agreement. A quick google didn't get me anything useful. -- b
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Re: [silk] Employee-Employee agreement for open source activity
On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 1:25 PM, Sudhakar Chandra tha...@gmail.com wrote: I don't have a template or resources I can point to. But some things both employer and employee should consider before embarking on this: 1. Is this a brand new, from the ground up project or the open sourcing of something the company had that was previously closed? The former is marginally less complex than the latter. This is a brand new project 2. Is the project in an area of that the employer is currently involved in? Is the employer likely to become involved in this area in the next 1|3|5|10 years? No and No. 3. Does the employer understand open source? Is employer an active supporter of open source? Is employer a beneficiary of open source? Yes. Yes and Yes. 4. Would the employee use any of the employer's resources (computers, bandwidth, electricity, office space, email address, hosting space, etc.) in developing the open source software? If not, how would the employee ensure that they are not using any resources from the employer in building this software? There is no intent to do so but no way has been proposed to verify that. 5. Even though employee might be developing the software purely on an individual basis, there is a chance that the software is perceived to be from the employer rather than the employee's personal project. The company has has already declared no interest in the project. 6. What license does the employee plan to use for the project? Is this in the best interest of the employee? The employer? AGPL. It was selected by the employee so presumably it is in his interest. The company doesn't care really. 7. What happens if someone sues the employee for the open source software? Can the employer get sucked into the dispute? The intent is that the company be insulated from this. 8. What happens to the employer/employee if the software turns out to be the next What's App or InstaApp? Ensuring clarity on this is one of the goals of this exercise. Some sort of agreement between the employer and the employee addressing the details of these would be a good starting step. Exactly -- a template for this was precisely what I was looking for. While my company is supportive it really isn't considered important enough to spend lawyer hours on. We're trying to set a precedent so that there is some boilerplate in place for other people. -- b
Re: [silk] Employee-Employee agreement for open source activity
On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 1:15 PM, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay sankarshan.mukhopadh...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 1:08 PM, Biju Chacko biju.cha...@gmail.com wrote: A colleague wants to start an open source project and wanted to make sure our employer is ok with it. What does the phrase is ok with it mean in this context? You can do what you want as long as there is no conflict of interest and no blatant misuse of company resources (ie replying to project related email on company time is probably fine but hours of writing code isn't). -- b
Re: [silk] Employee-Employee agreement for open source activity
The contract states that approval needs to be obtained on a case by case basis. The concern seems to be less about the IP issues and more about potential conflict of interest and misuse of company time and resources. -- b It's not quite my specialty (it used to be once upon a time), but if you guys come up with an agreement that reflects what you want, I'm happy to sanity check it from a legal perspective.
Re: [silk] Linguistics query
On Wed, 2014-06-04 at 07:21 +0530, Udhay Shankar N wrote: Idly wondering, and I thought the folks here might have some insight: Does the alphabet used by any Indian language have the concept of upper and lower case? (for the purposes of this query, let us explicitly exclude the Roman alphabet) That is an interesting question and to my knowledge the answer is no. A question that stems from this is Why on earth does the Roman alphabet come in two forms?. Greek seems to have this quirk. shiv
