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08/06/18, 03:09 PM   #9
Kyoma
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Join Date: Apr 2014
Posts: 125
Originally Posted by SlippyCheeze View Post
Simple: as a condition of my employment, I agreed to an IP and copyright assignment. While that was active for work on ESO addons, every addon I touched would have to go through an individual patch release process, or be released as part of my employers standard open source license. There are also a significant number of addons which, by virtue of the license agreement, I would be unable to patch.

I'd also be in the position where copyright would be retained by my employer, requiring a statement in the code to that effect, and I honestly don't want to deal with the oddities that would likely cause out in the wider world.

The delay was getting the approval of a release covering ESO addons; it was hardly a controversial thing, but it was something that required waiting on the request to be looked at by a committee that meets infrequently. Now it is granted, I can touch anything related to any addon for ESO without blinking. At least, as long as it is in lua.

So, it isn't exactly that I couldn't write code, it was that I couldn't release it without going through processes I didn't want to deal with. "Can't release" was a shorthand for this, honestly, over-long explanation.

FWIW, depending where in the world you are, even without a written agreement on the subject, you are probably either subject to a "by default" assignment to your employer, or in a grey area where it isn't clear under law who owns those rights, if you are employed to produce software for a living, or anything like that.

If you are a university student, I'd upgrade that to "are subject, 100 percent", everywhere I'm aware of. Universities are even more grabby than private companies. Government workers are also usually 100 percent subject to something similar, but the processes are fairly different.

This is a horribly unclear area, and IMO subject to vast overreach, but I'd rather understand the problem area and work in ways that don't subject me to potential pain and annoyance later.
I see, still seems weird your work license would apply to something you write in your own time that would have no relation to your work.
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