Subject: RE: [hackers-il] OpenSource by force?

From: Chen Shapira <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2000 10:42:40 +0200

Chen's official opinion:

Most companies bind their coders by a contract that says - "if you wrote it
- its ours". In such case opnesourcing that code on your own is plain
illegal - the code isn't yours. The license you released it under simply
won't hold. The copyright owner is your company - you can ask them to change
copyright and give you your code (unlikely) or ask them to release it under
a public license.
If the code is legally yours - no problem here - right?

How do you know who owns the code? your contract may tell you... 

The company view:
Start-ups see the case as - you never know what you'll sell. Some late night
hacks that seemed like a foolish game became a very sellable product,
start-ups rarely know what will be their main business, see the advua case,
the conduct case, etc. They will prefer not to opensource anything. *Unless*
they see opensource as a complete business strategy. 

Big companies are diffrent - they are likely to opensource if they think
it'll help more than harm. Or if they are desprate. The problem there is
that no one can decide on it. Forcing a decision in a big company is
difficult. you need to be ESR for that.