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They want the codebase or the project name,github and websites? If they just want the codebase it's a simple OSS fork, why would they need your permission?
They could surely fork it and take it from there. They would rather want that they own the code-base so that their enterprise customers can be assured that it is a product that they control and own. My product, unintentionally, solves a lot of problems for the enterprise product that my company sells.
IANAL and I'm sure this will get downvoted since people won't like what I have to say. I'd concentrate on the positive rather than the negative, that if you get to work on this project via your employer from this point on you'll be getting paid to do the thing you were doing for free. Getting paid for past work seems unlikely. You already admitted you didn't care about compensation by open sourcing the project. You w…
I have this concern too that by putting something out there without permission as an employee you may have done harm to the company. You need a lawyer. You may also want to consider hiring a coach to help you develop a voice within the corporate setting so that you can better influence the direction of products without having to build an alternative in your precious spare time. And if the company doesn’t currently ha…
Only a proper lawyer can help you, though you should do initial searches online to see wether you get an inkling of where you stand, and possibly reduce amount of time needed to spend on expensive lawyer. See if there are free legal councel near where you live, online or if anything can be covered by insurance.
"I've developed it on my own time but the product directly relates to what my employer does"
This is a bright huge red flag. Depending on the contract you signed, creating something in direct competition while employed can be grounds for assuming ownership. Using company resources, time, knowledge, clout, internal discussions and/or reputation, can be strong case for this company, against your position. Evidence and witnesses as well as your own words can be used against your position. If this IP was unrelated to company offerings, they would be less interested, and probably objectively strengthen your own case somewhat, depending on what they can prove and not.
If you want to go very cheap, or avoid possible bill-hungry lawyers: Ask your boss wether they've cleared this with their internal lawyers and if you can get this confimed via a signed statement of company claims of ownership and exactly about what they claim ownership of and not. Always go internally through nearest boss or neutral intermediate in writing: Export the communications as well. Avoid contradicting your own claims unwittingly.
If you get this letter and don't want to lawyer-up, I'm afraid your options are limited and you should do whatever necessary to avoid getting fired or sued. If they bluffed, you just called them on it, and can negotiate from there.
Unfortunately, depending on the legal councel at this company and possible value of your work, your standing looks very weak, possibly damaging against you. This is why it's so vital to keep work and personal life divided. What may help in such situations is to do book-keeping of resources and hours spent separately for such side-project and document the process, while making sure Nothing from work is used.
Currently, if they technically own the code, your open-sourcing it isn’t valid. You can put an Apache license in the repo, but you can’t legally give a license to others to use something you don’t actually own.
So the code is not really open source until someone puts that license on it with company authority. It is just public.
It sounds like this product competes with their other products. Even if they didn’t ask you to turn over control you would have problems working for them during the day, competing with them in the evening. Possibly liability even.
If you want control, and want to use it to do things they don’t want, you probably have to leave the company.
If you are going to leave, it seems you might turn over the repo to them to avoid legal trouble, and then be sure that someone else at the coming makes the open-source status official. Then you or others can fork it. But it seems you should only do further work on the fork if and after leaving.
Again this should not be construed as real legal advice as I am not a lawyer.
Tell them it's OSS and they can fork the code-base if they want more fine grained control. I know it's not going to resolve any issues but at least you are forcing them to say why that's not possible now and what long term plans they might have in store.
Find a lawyer, ASAP, that specializes in employment and / or IP. This is a legal issue and you need to solve it with people that know the law. Talking, signing, admitting things, etc, only hurt you. Depending on your country and state, as well as your employment agreement, there are a lot of impactful variables. Intuition and personal relationships are not going to help you solve this issue, especially, absent knowin…
Unless not in the US, in which case suddenly turning up with a lawyer might be like bringing a gun to an amicable discussion.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you have a medical problem, you go to a doctor. If you have a legal problem, you go to a lawyer. If you can't afford a lawyer you might as well roll over right now because that will be the end game. The idea that some advice given in an online forum would reduce the need for finding a lawyer is akin to taking medical advice from a forum. You have no idea what the qualifications/experience/jurisdictions are of the…
In the US maybe. In the UK, most of my lawyer friends would tell you that lawyering up is the last course of action you want to take, as it tends to make issues more complicated, expensive and combative, though you might want to be careful what you admit / agree to. My wifes a solicitor. :)
Your employer doesn't even need to know you consulted a lawyer.
Find a lawyer, ASAP, that specializes in employment and / or IP. This is a legal issue and you need to solve it with people that know the law. Talking, signing, admitting things, etc, only hurt you. Depending on your country and state, as well as your employment agreement, there are a lot of impactful variables. Intuition and personal relationships are not going to help you solve this issue, especially, absent knowin…
Blindly going to a lawyer can also be a bad advice. From my experience it opens a huge can of worms: first the situation may switch to a full on conflict for years . Your lawyer is incentivized to make you angry and fight to death, open other fronts etc... Another aspect some people might not understand too especially in low litigation countries is that "legal" and "fair" are different concepts. Reserve this kind of…
The tricky part is probably finding such a good lawyer and coming up with the money to pay them.
Edit: to add to you second point: If "legal" and "fair" are so different, that's exactly why you can't rely on your intuition but need to consult an expert.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wholeheartedly agree with your comment. The core is that OP created something of value, in his own time. So there should be a value exchange of some sort.
Depends entirely on the employment agreement. Many will automatically assign ownership of any code written to the employer.