As Simon said, it depends on the wording. My employment contract _was_ sufficiently vague that they could claim rights to one's gourmet pizza recipes developed at home if they wanted. I had a couple of meetings with my boss and HR and had the wording changed for my whole department (we're a development team), so that it was specific to employment related "stuff". I also obtained an addendum for myself allowing me to continue to run my own business on my own time (this was unofficially OK'ed previously, but I thought it best to get it in writing). There was no conflict of interest, and HR could see the outside work stuff as being complimentary in terms of skills, without being an IP or on the job performance threat.
If your contract says "during the course of your employment", then you'll have to do you FOSS stuff out of hours, unless you get those nice clauses (which can be tricky). I am not a lawyer, - Rog > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Michael Knight > Sent: Wednesday, 2 June 2004 11:53 PM > To: SLUG > Subject: [SLUG] Developing FOSS while employed developing > proprietary software > > Hi guys, > > I'm currently employed as a web developer/sys-admin for a > small business. My employment contract basically states > pretty clearly that anything I `invent' during the course of > my employment becomes the property of the company. > > Obviously this is legally a severe hindrance to me helping > out / creating FOSS in the best ways I am able. > > I've had a bit of a look at http://www.sage-au.org.au/osda/ > and a few other places, but would be interested to hear from > the list about people who are/were in similar situations > and/or have some good suggestions as to how I can convince my > boss to add some of those nice clauses to my contract. > > A workmate and I have talked with him about it before but he > seems to think that if we're programming in our spare time > we'll be too tired or we'll be thinking about our other > projects during work time. > > Thanks for any insights! > > -- > Mike > -- > SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - > http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: > http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html > > -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
