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Getting Paid To Abandon an Open Source Project?
darkeye writes "I'm facing a difficult dilemma and looking for opinions. I've been contributing heavily to an open source project, making considerable changes to code organization and quality, but the work is unfinished at the moment. Now, a company is approaching me to continue my changes. They want to keep the improvements to themselves, which is possible since the project is published under the BSD license. That's fair, as they have all the rights to the work they pay for in full. However, they also want me to sign a non-competition clause, which would bar me from ever working on and publishing results for the original open source project itself, even if done separately, in my free time. How would you approach such a decision? On one side, they'd provide resources to work on an interesting project. On the other, it would make me an outcast in the project's community. Moreover, they would take ownership of not just what they paid for, but also my changes leading up to this moment, and I wouldn't be able to continue on my original codebase in an open source manner if I sign their contract."
Accept, *without* the non-compete agreement and a formal written agreement that all work done by me while I'm employed by that company goes back to the original codebase, *unless* it's something highly client-specific.
If they did not accept that, I would forbid them to use any code from the project, and bring down the wrath of the relevant copyright laws, if they were not prepared to abide by the licensing terms.
I think the fact that the company wants to monetize the open source project and never give back (even if it is within their rights) says a lot about their corporate ethics. How would they treat you as an employee? How would they treat you if you rejected them?
Personally, I don't think I could get in a business relationship with such an outfit unless I was out of other options to put food on the table.
Since corporate appropriation of this type of work is tolerated, or even encouraged, what is your hangup? You should be jumping at the chance.
Cheers!
"The only good windmill is a tilted windmill."
They're gone Mac have the energy Raadt's stubborn 'superior' machine. raise or lo3er ?the Moronic, dilettante give BSD credit Software lawyers COUNTERPART, example, if you
Money is worthless? Oh, that's a good one.
You can get enough money to keep doing what you want to do, lots of different ways, from lots of different sources.
Yeah, all those PayPal buttons on open-source project sites are getting a ton of activity...
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
They put shackles on all of us. Robbery could his bills too, until his new "friends" stab him in the back to take all the winnings for themselves. Guess which community will be happier to take him back when he learns the error of his ways and GPL's future code.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.