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Ask Slashdot: What To Do With Shelved OSS Project Fixes?
New submitter superwiz writes: A company for which I worked for recently had a project which required debugging a few abandoned OSS projects. 2 of the projects ended up not being used in the company products even though bugs were found and resolved in them. This puts me in a legal limbo. Since the company paid for my time to work out those bugs, they own the copyright. I can't release them. But since they shelved the projects in which the OSS code was to be used, they don't have to release the code to the public. It would be pretty simple to identify me as the person who made the changes even if I were to release the code anonymously because these changes were committed to my former employer's private repository. Should I just forget it? I don't like the idea of information loss, especially given how much benefit that company already derives from other OSS projects. But I also don't want to release the code which I don't own. Has anyone been in this situation before? How did you handle it (other than just 'forget about it')?
Ok. I've read a couple of your posts now. I have no idea what you think copyright extends to, but talking to someone is not one of them. If you have a confidentiality agreement on your employment that is another thing entirely.
Seriously I deal with significant money contracts every single day. An email acknowledgement is more than enough contract to go on. Get your ex-boss to ok the release. If he says no, then you drop it. If he says yes, then you are good. If he changes his mind you have the email trail.