Re: Contributing to the kernel while being employed

[Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com>]

On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 10:13:27AM -0400, Anuradha Ratnaweera wrote:
> Before working for a commercial organization, one usually has to sign a
> contract which makes all the work done during the period of employment
> (including innovations, "hobby" coding done during "after hours")
> copyrighted by the employer.  This introduces various problems when one
> wishes to do open source development, especially as a hobby.

Unless you are someone that sticks out from the crowd of engineers, you
are basically in trouble.  If your employer can't easily replace you
then you can negotiate a different employee contract.  This is quite 
common for a certain level of engineers.  I've done it and it is not
easy but one tip: describe the open source work as "pro bono work
for the community at large" and at least the lawyers will have a clue,
that's more or less their idea of open source.
-- 
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Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm