Which License Should I Use?

[mojosam]

Thanks to everyone so far.  You've helped a lot.  (BTW, I read this
through Google Groups.  Somehow they've gotten about 24 hours behind,
so I'm seeing your replies a day late.)

The biggest misconception I had was that the license could force the
code to stay open source.  You're right.  What I do on company time
belongs to the company.  I guess I assumed there was a license that
forced them to release it.

At one place I worked, they had to delay the release of the product by
a few weeks, because they discovered that they had included an open
source (don't know which license) module.  They had to pull it out and
recode it themselves (I know the other thread covered the subtleties of
whether even that was kosher, but let's ignore that here).  I think the
problem there was they believed that if they included the module, they
would have had to release the source code to the entire project.  I was
kind of hoping for something like that.

I would have to talk to a lawyer to be sure, but right now, I think I
can argue that anything I do on my own time belongs to me.  I'm
technically a consultant right now (even though I'm spending 40
hours/week with the one "client").  I can take on other clients, as
long as they don't directly compete.  This means they're hiring my
expertise.  If I bring my own tools, that's part of my expertise.  I do
recall there was a clause in the contract that anything I did on their
time belonged to them.  For my next client, I should definitely include
a clause about rereleasing open source changes.

Anyway, staying away from the lawyer issues, if anyone has additional
thoughts to add to this, please keep the conversation going.  People
are raising some good points.

Ron Britton
nk67v8o02
at
sneakemail.com