One Approach To Open Source Code Contribution and Testing

An anonymous reader writes "Brian Aker, one of the core developers of MySQL, has written up a lengthy blog on how the Drizzle fork is handling both its code contributions and its testing. He has listed the tools they use and how they work with their processes. He also makes an interesting statement about the signing of corporate code-contribution agreements and how there are some, including Rasmus (creator of PHP), who refuse to sign them."

If I signed a code-contribution agreement

[Monkeedude1212]

Saying that anything I invent or discover (or along those lines) during my time working at my company - and in my spare time I decide to make Flash games...

Does that make my hobby-work belongs to a company that holds no interest in it? If it gets sponsored on a website could they claim rights?

Re:all-your-code-is-ours

[Anonymous Coward]

Seconded.

When I came to work for my current employer, there was an ambiguously worded section that could be taken to mean that they owned any code I wrote whether at work, or on my own time. I talked to the divisional controller and had a clarifying statement inserted to put a division between work done on the company dime, and anything I did outside of that. They didn't have any problem with that, and it hasn't negatively impacted my working relationship with anyone here.

Re:all-your-code-is-ours

[internerdj]

Also on an interesting note, I had to sign an all-your-creative-work-are-belong-to-us agreement for my employer. When I went back for my Master's Degree my agreement to the student handbook essentially said all my submitted work was the school's property. Contractually I don't think I had the right to sign over those works to the school because I've already signed them over to my company. I wonder how that works for TurnItIn.com. Theoretically they now have materials in their database that I never had the rights to give them and my company could legally demand those materials be purged. Sure it won't happen and would put me in a legal bind I'm sure but it is interesting.

Re:There, fixed it for you

[Red Flayer]

My experience is, from stints at four employers (two of those very long stints) in the tech industry, is that the HR drones are, in fact, clueless. HR clerkdom is where you put employees you don't want to fire, but can't cut the mustard in other areas. Maybe this is a function of my previous employers... but I've seen it too many times to think it's not a normal situation.

Yes, the problem is systemic. But clueless HR drones do, indeed, hinder resolution by not escalating when required, by not knowing how to handle exceptions.

Interestingly, my one non-tech-industry employer did not have this problem. HR clerkdom was where they screened raw graduates for promotion to other departments, mostly as admins. If they weren't up and running well in 60 days, they got canned. That HR department was a pleasure to work with... all the fresh hires new to escalate immediately on process exceptions.

Re:all-your-code-is-ours

[gbjbaanb]

yes, very interesting.

If a court upholds the agreement you had that all your code belongs to the first contracted party, then all we need to do in future is to sign a legal agreement that all-your-creative-work-are-belong-to-us with your mum before you join a new company.

If they side with the later, then join, and then sign with your mum :)

If they agree with both parties... then neither have rights to the code that each has the rights to... if my head stops spinning, I think that means its all a load of unenforceable bo**ocks. Sign the agreement with your mum anyway.

Re:all-your-code-is-ours

[Bromskloss]

Your school-versus-work situation made me remember that of a PhD student at my university. His PhD studies are financed by a company and at the start of the project, the university apparently signed over, to the company, the rights to any inventions that might come about as a result of the students work. However, and the company should have known this, according to Swedish law, the rights to the invention belongs to the researcher himself, not his university. So as far as I understand, the financing company sits happliy awaiting inventions they will not get.

Re:all-your-code-is-ours

[mcrbids]

I'm an employer.

I'm going to offer good pay, full-time schedule, excellent (expensive!) medical/health benefits, a courteous and comfortable work environment, and in exchange, I want you to work for me. I have no desire to pay you to start up a competing company - do that on your own dime like I did. I don't care if you want to build a PHP thingie that keeps track of your MP3 collection, but if you come up with a useful idea while working on our products and decide to keep it for yourself rather than provide it, that would piss me off - it's my dime that you developed it with!

I'm not asking you to never work for anyone else, I really don't care much what you do after you quit. But while you're working for me, I do expect you to (ahem) work for me.

Really, what is wrong with that arrangement?