On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 09:11:12 -0500, Jim Jagielski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > For any company which hires peoples specifically to work > on OSS projects, or who specifically allow people to work > on them (either off-hours or on-hours, ala Google), having > them sign a CCLA is a no-brainer. > > For those whose companies are "anti-OSS" or who > barely tolerate their employees working on OSS, a > CCLA would be nice, but unrealistic to expect. In > those cases, the employee must be *extremely* careful > to know and understand what is and is not allowed > within their employee agreement. A typical example > is that if you are provided by a laptop by your company, > you take it on the plane with you, and develop some > code or patch using it, the company could reasonably > claim that it was developed using company resources and > is therefore the property of the company.
And that's where Apache could help the most - instead of more complex legal papers, it would be better to have a FAQ ( prefferably verified by someone who doesn't use "IANAL" in the signature ) explaining this kind of stuff. Some things seem clear - you can't do the work during the work hours ( instead of weekend/vacation/evening), or use any hardware or bandwith from company. Some things are not clear. I liked the mail about the "Master and Servant" and english law - but I think it looks closer to some roman law ( like "Owner and Slaves" ) :-) For people working on large corporations - it is very hard to do anything that is not somehow related or couldn't be used by the corporation. You take a picture - the company may have a department selling content. So the important question is - does it matter what project you work on part of your job, or absolutely anything you do in your free time is owned by the corporation if the corporation has a business that is related to the activity ? I also heard about different state laws - in particular CA. IMO if ASF could provide more (verified/trusted) information to people who are employed and their job is not to write open source - it'll be very usefull and probably more benefical than black/white decisions on requiring CCLAs. Costin --------------------------------------------------------------------- DISCLAIMER: Discussions on this list are informational and educational only, are not privileged and do not constitute legal advice. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
