RE: What are a programmer's rights to what he writes?

This is another bad analogy (IMHO) and (IANAL) but once you publish in a newspaper or other similar flier etc. the work appears to go to into the public domain. This does not however mean that anyone can willy-nilly use the work because the author owns copyright rights for original work. The question that comes about is if the author is the original writer with the byline or the newspaper (employer). You also would need to know if the writer was freelance etc...

Software is an entirely different beast, it is not published like an article for public consumption but rather for a specific purpose in a specific place for a specific (contract/employer/?).

As someone else mentioned, the best parallel is books or short stories. Since the writer is under contract (or perhaps not) to develop work for a publisher the collective work belongs to the publisher but the intellectual material belongs to the writer. Now that requires some refinement, to reproduce the entire publication would obviously violate the publishers rights that is not what I mean by intellectual material, what I do mean is that the author is free to develop other works (derivative if you will) using the same theme and perhaps the same characters. The publisher is under no obligation to purchase the work and the writer may or may not be under exclusive contract for the work to that publisher and is free to sell to other publishers or place the work in the public domain.

Software writers (On There Own Time and On There Own Equipment) can produce work which they alone own. They may choose to share that work with there contractee/employer or place the work in the public domain or as copyrighted material. One needs to be able to prove this though and there are certainly simple ways to do this via a common notary, this establishes the date the work was done (and to the notaries best knowledge from what they are told, where the work was done).

-----Original Message-----
From: Gwecnal@aol.com [mailto:Gwecnal@aol.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2000 02:44 PM
To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
Subject: Re: What are a programmer's rights to what he writes?

In a message dated 5/23/2000 12:28:08 PM EST, "Nathan M. Andelin"
<nathanma@haaga.com> writes:

>  Is it illegal for a programmer to use source code he was employed to write?
>  Is it unethical?  For example, should a programmer be able show some of his
>  past source code to a prospective future employer?
> 
>  My question is what rights do programmers have to their works?  And, in
your
>  opinion, what rights should a programmer have?

I don't pretend to know what the law says, but I think a programmer's rights
SHOULD be something like a writer.  If I work for a newspaper and am looking
for another job, I not only can, but must, have a portfolio of clippings of
articles I have written.  They show the prospective employer what I have
done, and therefore can do.  Merely having the clippings does not, of course,
give me copyrights to the material - those are owned by my employeer. 
Showing them does not give copy or commercial use rights to my prospective
employer either.  However, if I spent most of my time at my current employer
covering, say, politics I can use the expertise earned to be a political
reporter at the new place of employment.  I think listings constitue a 'fair
use' of my stuff and if they do not reveal trade secrets should be OK to show
to new employers.  Just my .0215 euros, Lance
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