2 Aug
2009
2 Aug
'09
11:40 a.m.
Patrick Shirkey wrote:
On 08/02/2009 08:14 PM, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
You aren't from Germany?!
I was in another situation, I signed a contract that said, I'll lose
rights for artworks if I sell it. That's fine. But in addition the
contract said, any work that I hand in to the company must not be hand
in to any other company, even if they won't by my artwork.
In Germany we call this "Sittenwidrig" (immoral), such a stipulation is
null and void. Here I know that it is that way.
On the other hand, if a company pays you a regular salary and the job is
named "developer", it might include that a copyright will subrogate to
the employer, even if there isn't any stipulation saying this. Here I'm
not sure.
Arnold Krille wrote:
Just because you work for a company or contribute code to a company
doesn't give them exclusive license to your code.
You have to *explicitly* sign or give that right away.
IIUC, if you don't sign a contract or otherwise agree in writing or
verbally that your code is not owned by you or your company then it's
yours or your companies to do with as you or your company will.
Caveat is that your use of the code can not infringe on any other
rights for any other owners of any code that you have used as part of
your code or linked to in a way that makes it a part of your codebase
in a legal definition of any licenses that are attributed to code that
you have used or linked with.
phew.....
This is why gpl is so much simpler and loved. If you didn't sign a contract and work on a
project, the
copyright is still yours
Are you sure? I guess (and I'm not sure) that if you did some kind of
work, e.g. being a developer for a company, it implies that the employer
will take on the copyright and that you aren't allowed to disclose
know-how, even if there isn't a special contract saying this. If I'm
wrong, this would give me some thrilling views for my future, because
of my past and especially a friend could benefit from this, because he
did much more for other people than I did.