How do you keep your software 'yours'?

>Wrote a program in spare time
>Employer is interested in using it
>Don't want to lose ownership/rights to it

What's the best way to approach this?

FOSScucks can fuck off

MIT licence nigger, face it, no one will pay a licence to use your COMP101 homework project

>FOSScucks can fuck off

Though I guess it doesn't matter since you're probably a beta and Chad from marketing will just bully you into letting your employer have it.

>wrote a program in spare time
>employeer wants to use it

This raises some questions. First, how did your employer find out about it? Second, why does this program written in your free time do something so related to your job that your employer wants to use it?

Pending on how deep your employer's pockets are why not just sell it to them outright?

depends.
There's been lawsuits over intellectual proberty, ie you gained the knowledge at jour job.
So if it's something related to your work, it's best not to make it available to them imho.

If it's something unrelated, start a venture and license it to them.
don't EVER do it for free, they'll only want you to do updates and so on for free aswell.

Do they know it's your program?
Depending on your relation to your superiors, sit down with em, outline your plans with said program and your plans to license it so they know it won't be a freebie

Make the program a front end with significant work done on your server. If needed, disable the server. QED

Let's have a little talk.

You write a contract.

Or if you really trust him you could do it verbally.

If you do don't know then you are a retard and potentially haven't wrote any program..

Nigger. I've licensed work that I've done on REST APIs to Turner sports.

Give them license to use it while you're employed with a contingency that they will pay you directly should your employment end.

Stallman looks like Robert Baratheon.

I don't know anything about licenses so I slap MIT on everything just to get git to shut the fuck up about licenses.

You'll give it to them for free cuz you're a pussy

You realize that means you don't own any of your projects, right?

>Give them license to use it while you're employed with a contingency that they will pay you directly should your employment end.
This
Have them pay you a lump sum up front for it's use, a small monthly sum to use it, then if you leave or if you are fired, a larger monthly sum

Also, if you work for a larger company, triple what you think it's worth to them and start negotiating with that (as long as a competing piece of software isn't cheaper)

>Don't want to lose ownership/rights to it

If the company you work for is even halfway competent, you lost the rights to whatever you created the moment you signed the employment documents (they cover IP). You're on a slippery slope. If you value your job, you'll probably want to assist your company any way you can, and work yourself into a promotion/award, instead of being a douche that management will purge like a slippery bowel movement after morning coffee.

It would be pretty fucking silly to be an IT company, hire an employee, and then legally leave yourself open to have that employee say oh wait, you have to pay me extra for my work even though you employ me! (It doesn't matter if it's not exactly what you were hired on to do - so that's a moot point).

The real world is a bitch, kiddo.

I would be fucking ecstatic if my company actually wanted to use something I made in my free time. All I see is increased job security based on my new responsibility for a new initiative within the company, and straight up recognition for my skills because there's no greater approval for a piece of code than wanting to actually use it.

Why are all you nerds so disloyal anyways?

>Why are all you nerds so disloyal anyways?

Fucking millennials, that's why.

Sell it to them for an up-front, and a yearly subscription for support.
It's what microsoft is doing, but with an operating system

>no subscription in win10
2021. You heard it first.

source: MS employee

>Why are all you nerds so disloyal anyways?

you learn from your mistakes
fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me

This happens to me at every job. I fall ass backward into being indispensable because of API shit I've written.

There are two options here and you already decided which one you have to take when you accepted your job. Either your employment contract states that your employer gets copyright of software you write in your free time in which case you have already lost ownership and can't do anything about it, or your contract doesn't say that and you can license the software to your employer on under terms you want.
You do not have to sell ownership to your employer, you can just sell them a license to use it.

Implying that an employment contract that claimed that the employer owned shit you did in your free time would hold up in court. My last employer tried that shit and got fucked when we went to court and had to pay all legal fees.

Yes. Finally some good advice.
Sell it. Keep ownership of it.

I'm sick of all this devaluation of creative works.

People need to stand up for IP. Laws need to be strengthened here in the US.


fbfounderNative
Richard Fairley

>If the company you work for is even halfway competent, you lost the rights to whatever you created the moment you signed the employment documents (they cover IP).
just don't sign a shitty contract when you get hired and that won't be a problem lol