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Little encouragement, no funding: why open source founders are leaving EU

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Re: Little encouragement, no funding: why open source founders are leaving EU

#11
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post #2

OSS is a mess in EU. In Germany, signing a FTE contract also entails implicitly that, if I produce something over the weekends, my employer has legal power to claim it as their IP. If I probably contribute something to some open-source project, my employer can also claim royalty of that too. While there are not much precedents of these happening, the legal rights remain. Also, non-compete is implicit too. Also, gener…

That must be Germany-specific because I don't think that's universal. As far as I know, anything I write in my free time is mine, unless maybe my employer can prove it's directly related to my work for them. And most companies I worked for were very supportive of open source, one of them actively involved in several Apache projects and employing committers for several projects, on top of releasing their own software…

Most companies I've worked for (Denmark) has had a similar clause in their contracts.

No clue if it holds up in court though.

Re: Little encouragement, no funding: why open source founders are leaving EU

#12
post #2

OSS is a mess in EU. In Germany, signing a FTE contract also entails implicitly that, if I produce something over the weekends, my employer has legal power to claim it as their IP. If I probably contribute something to some open-source project, my employer can also claim royalty of that too. While there are not much precedents of these happening, the legal rights remain. Also, non-compete is implicit too. Also, gener…

> if I produce something over the weekends, my employer has legal power to claim it as their IP

I live in Germany and I'm certain you are mistaken. The situation becomes different if you so much as looked at your OSS projects during work hours, but the projects you work on in your free time are yours.

This is similar to how your FT employer can't keep you from taking up another part time job on the weekends.

Just because your contract has such a clause doesn't mean it's enforcable in court.

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