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An apology to open source

chartjs.org

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Re: An apology to open source

#21

Post by Swizec »

kawsper wrote: post #18
prima-facie wrote: post #6

This shows the shitty policy that most companies have. They use open source internally and give nothing back.

Yeah, I have been working for Rails shop that did exactly this. I wasn't able to do anything, not even in my spare time, to contribute to open-source projects or do other work. The other work I can understand, because I could help a competitor for an example. But that they owned ownership for every line of code written by me, even on my time off, was killing my inspiration.

One solution to this problem that I found is to be a freelancer instead of an employee. It also tends to work well in terms of "Hey, the surf is good, I won't be working today. Kthxbai"

Somehow, as if by magic, as soon as you become a freelancer people stop caring about butt-in-seat time and start caring about results. Same goes for IP, I have never had a client complain about opensourcing something I made on their buck.

Re: An apology to open source

#22

Post by nevinera »

kawsper wrote: post #18
prima-facie wrote: post #6

This shows the shitty policy that most companies have. They use open source internally and give nothing back.

Yeah, I have been working for Rails shop that did exactly this. I wasn't able to do anything, not even in my spare time, to contribute to open-source projects or do other work. The other work I can understand, because I could help a competitor for an example. But that they owned ownership for every line of code written by me, even on my time off, was killing my inspiration.

>But that they owned ownership for every line of code written by me, even on my time off, was killing my inspiration.

Where were you working? That's definitely not how US ip-law operates.

Re: An apology to open source

#25

Post by tzaman »

manmal wrote: post #5

The real question is, what kind of employer shuts down a project like this, cutting themselves off from useful contributions by other people?

And not only that, they could benefit from it immensely - by adding a 'sponsored by' link on the project pages.

Re: An apology to open source

#27

Post by porker »

manmal wrote: post #5

The real question is, what kind of employer shuts down a project like this, cutting themselves off from useful contributions by other people?

A normal employer with a normal-world mindset. This is their competitive advantage and they're keeping it for themselves - even though they didn't (in his reading) buy the original code he wrote.

Sad, but a fact of life if you deal with businesses.

Re: An apology to open source

#29

Post by ayanb »

An open note to Nick's Employers -

1) If you are a technology company, this is Harakiri (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku). You are alienating every developer who is worth her salt. If you have a recruiting arm, and they are trying to recruit, god be with them. Ofcourse, you think people will never come to know, but this has the potential to be a good story and press will pick it up. I will not be surprised if Techcrunch or Wired Enterprise picks this up first.

2) Strategically, this is so uncool. You could have leveraged this open sourcing in several ways. Made the codebase part of your official Github ( ever heard of Bootstrap?) and drummed up participation. If THIS was the product, you could leverage the free PR to accelerate user-acquisition. Nick had some amazing documentation, and he even got SUCH a cool domain for you guys.

3) Eventually, you will lose Nick, who seems quite competent, who will move on to do better things under the umbrella of better employers.

Pretty lame, on several counts.

Re: An apology to open source

#30

Post by jre »

kawsper wrote: post #18
prima-facie wrote: post #6

This shows the shitty policy that most companies have. They use open source internally and give nothing back.

Yeah, I have been working for Rails shop that did exactly this. I wasn't able to do anything, not even in my spare time, to contribute to open-source projects or do other work. The other work I can understand, because I could help a competitor for an example. But that they owned ownership for every line of code written by me, even on my time off, was killing my inspiration.

Is this even legal ? In Switzerland, I don't think an employer can claim ownership of a piece of work that was produced on the employee spare time (and on his own computer and so on).
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