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An apology to open source

chartjs.org

171–180 of 259 posts

Re: An apology to open source

#171
post #53

Don't just take it down. Destroy it. Make sure that any benefit your employer was receiving from it vanishes. If they claim ownership, despite the work having been done in your free time, demand the overtime pay. Make it clear that OSHA will be involved if they decline. Hardline dickery deservers to be repaid in kind. Ah: Edit still available: Destroy was the wrong word. Make inaccessible to everyone, including the e…

Overtime doesn't apply to white collar workers. I've not heard of OSHA being involved in employer IP issues, nor in any software engineering environment. Destroying something the company claims as their IP would subject someone to some serious criminal and civil liability. Also, if the guy didn't like his job, he'd probably find another one. I get the sense he wants to keep this one and maintain a civil employment.

>Overtime doesn't apply to white collar workers.

  Not true. Software developers are mostly exempt, but there are some that will be non-exempt from overtime based on their salary. If the person makes less than $455 a week as salaried or less than $27.63 an hour as an hourly employeed then they will be non-exempt (http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/fairpay/fs17e_computer.htm). However, I have a feeling it would be hard to find somebody paid at that rate.

Re: An apology to open source

#172
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is OFTEN how US employment contracts work though... Perhaps not in CA, but the rest of the US...

Every employment contract I've been asked to sign has had some level of owning stuff I do off-hours (up to everything you do any time on your own computers, everything you've done in the past, etc...).

I've always pushed back and gotten it changed to meet my needs.

Re: An apology to open source

#173
post #84
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was he also asked by his employer to take down his "final year university project" that this was supposed to be? That sounds a little bit incongruous to me. Or was the "final year university project" also somehow related to his job output preceding in the creation of said final year project?

The IP of my final year (UK) university project belongs to the University not me, and not to the company that was sponsoring me for my final year.

Are you sure? I employ PhD students to work on commercial products and there is a strict rule in the university that any work done by the student is owned by the student. We are granted an irrevocable, fully transferable licence to use their work, but the student is not locked out from doing whatever they like with the stuff that they did. I'd be surprised if that was not the same for undergraduates - although I am aware that university boards are becoming very greedy with respect to I.P.

Re: An apology to open source

#175

Some alternative JavaScript charting libraries... * Highcharts JS ( http://www.highcharts.com/ ) * Flot ( http://www.flotcharts.org/ ) * NVD3 ( http://nvd3.org/ ) * morris.js ( http://www.oesmith.co.uk/morris.js/ ) * Rickshaw ( http://code.shutterstock.com/rickshaw/ ) * jqPlot ( http://www.jqplot.com/ ) * gRaphaël ( http://g.raphaeljs.com/ ) * YUI charts ( http://yuilibrary.com/yui/docs/charts/ ) * Polychart.js ( htt…

Hightcharts is amazing. I've done some very nice in-house custom charts with it. Very easy to customize, very well documented. I'd highly recommend it.

Re: An apology to open source

#176
post #29

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…

You have only one side of the story. Maybe the company doesn't have the rights on the code and cannot decide to open source it. Maybe they're making money with the code and open sourcing it is killing the business. Maybe they have a procedure before open sourcing code. If tomorrow I wake up with a developer open sourcing part of the work he does for us I would sure be very unhappy. You just can't condone that kind of…

Either way, the jinn has left the bottle and is not going to come back.

Re: An apology to open source

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen employment contracts in the UK that try the "own time" thing - these are probably not enforceable, but you probably wouldn't want to go through the process of putting that to the test.

It is widespread practice in the UK for "a certain type of organisation" to include a blanket IP clause in their standard employment contracts. I don't know of any robust legal argument that such a clause should not be enforceable (which isn't to say that none exists, but I've been involved in some fairly heavy negotiations on this score in the past and no lawyer on either side has ever questioned that aspect to my k…

"a certain type of organisation"

I'd love to know what you mean by that! :-)

Re: An apology to open source

#178

Some alternative JavaScript charting libraries... * Highcharts JS ( http://www.highcharts.com/ ) * Flot ( http://www.flotcharts.org/ ) * NVD3 ( http://nvd3.org/ ) * morris.js ( http://www.oesmith.co.uk/morris.js/ ) * Rickshaw ( http://code.shutterstock.com/rickshaw/ ) * jqPlot ( http://www.jqplot.com/ ) * gRaphaël ( http://g.raphaeljs.com/ ) * YUI charts ( http://yuilibrary.com/yui/docs/charts/ ) * Polychart.js ( htt…

I looked at and played with many of those and I would strongly recommend Flot over all of them. https://code.google.com/p/flot/ Their site isn't sexy, but the code is solid and very easy to work with. EDIT: Their site was updated and looks pretty good now. http://www.flotcharts.org/

The site looks pretty good actually: http://www.flotcharts.org/

Re: An apology to open source

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked at and played with many of those and I would strongly recommend Flot over all of them. https://code.google.com/p/flot/ Their site isn't sexy, but the code is solid and very easy to work with. EDIT: Their site was updated and looks pretty good now. http://www.flotcharts.org/

The site looks pretty good actually: http://www.flotcharts.org/

They must have updated it. It looks much better than when I last used it.

Re: An apology to open source

#180

Some alternative JavaScript charting libraries... * Highcharts JS ( http://www.highcharts.com/ ) * Flot ( http://www.flotcharts.org/ ) * NVD3 ( http://nvd3.org/ ) * morris.js ( http://www.oesmith.co.uk/morris.js/ ) * Rickshaw ( http://code.shutterstock.com/rickshaw/ ) * jqPlot ( http://www.jqplot.com/ ) * gRaphaël ( http://g.raphaeljs.com/ ) * YUI charts ( http://yuilibrary.com/yui/docs/charts/ ) * Polychart.js ( htt…

* xCharts (http://tenxer.github.com/xcharts/)

Personally, I'd only use libraries that are based on D3.js so that in case you need some individualization you can more easily hack it. AFAIK, nvd3, rickshaw and xCharts are based on D3.js

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