I am not a lawyer. ;-) But I am reasonable. I don't like poker; but I have a good poker face. Something the barefoot lawyer drilled into my head was: stay out of court! I look at contracts that way. A hohum contract which has indisputable clarity is preferable to one which seems like it might go your way in court. In general, most employment contracts seem to lack that clarity.
It's difficult if not impossible to separate open source from consulting. Then there's this notion of "fiduciary duty" which mostly gets ignored. A lot of companies don't seem to be able to define what it is they do in a way that it seems to me would stand up in court. Even if you try really hard, there aren't that many ways to compare the contents of two arrays. How many companies are really "devops companies"? How many hire or contract devops engineers? How is that distinction drawn?
Seems to me that clear practices for compartmentalizing and handling open source and identifying potential open source candidates are lacking. I've been told that my contract doesn't allow me to report bugs upstream: do I want to test that in court? Is it reasonable for me, as a professional who damned well knows better to claim that a string compare is an original work? [0] Does that impugn my integrity, in court? Does "open source" augur professional standards which should be upheld, in court? If someone hires me, knowing that I profess to hold to certain professional standards, demonstrated by involvement with open source, and the contract suggests otherwise, which way will that fall in court?
"Tools of the trade" addressed a somewhat different concern: clients and employers who would prefer that the code wasn't openly published, even if it was acknowledged to embody such a tool. (This was actually a big one.) I'm not convinced that that concern doesn't still have some validity (although not submitting bugs upstream "because opsec" my ass).
Suppose a contract says that any open source I am involved with and I use in conjunction with performance of services therefore grants to them some "rights"? What if I'm not the only contributor? What about the ironclad limitation of liability which is part of the open source license?
[0] I wrote the Zen InterSLIP Dialing Script. Some time later received communications from a publisher in a lather because it had been included on some CD included with some book. I stated numerous times, in numerous ways, that in my opinion it didn't reach the level of originality which imbued it with intellectual property protections.
You're welcome to stalk me and reach out if you want to continue this convo. rgds...
Comments
I am not a lawyer. ;-) But I am reasonable. I don't like poker; but I have a good poker face. Something the barefoot lawyer drilled into my head was: stay out of court! I look at contracts that way. A hohum contract which has indisputable clarity is preferable to one which seems like it might go your way in court. In general, most employment contracts seem to lack that clarity.
It's difficult if not impossible to separate open source from consulting. Then there's this notion of "fiduciary duty" which mostly gets ignored. A lot of companies don't seem to be able to define what it is they do in a way that it seems to me would stand up in court. Even if you try really hard, there aren't that many ways to compare the contents of two arrays. How many companies are really "devops companies"? How many hire or contract devops engineers? How is that distinction drawn?
Seems to me that clear practices for compartmentalizing and handling open source and identifying potential open source candidates are lacking. I've been told that my contract doesn't allow me to report bugs upstream: do I want to test that in court? Is it reasonable for me, as a professional who damned well knows better to claim that a string compare is an original work? [0] Does that impugn my integrity, in court? Does "open source" augur professional standards which should be upheld, in court? If someone hires me, knowing that I profess to hold to certain professional standards, demonstrated by involvement with open source, and the contract suggests otherwise, which way will that fall in court?
"Tools of the trade" addressed a somewhat different concern: clients and employers who would prefer that the code wasn't openly published, even if it was acknowledged to embody such a tool. (This was actually a big one.) I'm not convinced that that concern doesn't still have some validity (although not submitting bugs upstream "because opsec" my ass).
Suppose a contract says that any open source I am involved with and I use in conjunction with performance of services therefore grants to them some "rights"? What if I'm not the only contributor? What about the ironclad limitation of liability which is part of the open source license?
[0] I wrote the Zen InterSLIP Dialing Script. Some time later received communications from a publisher in a lather because it had been included on some CD included with some book. I stated numerous times, in numerous ways, that in my opinion it didn't reach the level of originality which imbued it with intellectual property protections.
You're welcome to stalk me and reach out if you want to continue this convo. rgds...