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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')?
Have you simply talked to your employer about it?
Not all businesses, or at least the management, are blood-sucking, money hungry, assholes.
Perhaps work out a deal where you do some pro-bono on the next project in exchange for the right to release the code? I mean, if the benefits of releasing it is that beneficial to the community, surely you can suck up a some unpaid time in exchange for its release...
This. I've worked at various businesses, from a small family run one, to a big megacorp. At both ends of the scale, the management have been totally OK with me submitting code to open source projects, despite it not being a core part of the business but using open source code for various parts of our work. They have often even allocated time to do the work, and when necessary signed off on copyright assignment when required. And in the case of abandoned projects where the company no longer sees any commercial value, it should be even easier, especially when the work was already done and is just sitting around. It sounds like they are familiar with open source stuff, given that you were working on it as part of the project, so it really can't hurt to ask if it's OK to contribute back those changes. Chances are they'll say yes, and if not at least you tried.
The code you wrote is their property, but the fact that there is a bug is not. Pseudocode outlining a fix would also constitute new work. IF they stonewall, you can report the bug(s) later, anonymously, with a solution approach. Better than nothing, and not illegal.