Re: Does your company pay you to write open source code?
Esther,
I'd be happy to talk to you about accomodations for open source
developers at companies like Sun, Intel, IBM, RedHat, Google and
others. There are some issues, which I would break out as follows:
1. Developers who are contracting to work on Open Source projects
2. Developers who work part-time on Open Source as employees of their
companies (such as the Google 20%ers)
3. Developers whose full-time job is coding on Open Source projects
as employees of a company
4. Developers who work after hours or on their own time on Open
Source projects.
Danese Cooper
Board Member, Open Source Initiative
danese@gmail.com
On Nov 15, 2006, at 3:22 PM, Esther Schindler wrote:
I'm a computer industry journalist who just started in a new
position; I'm senior online editor cio.com and csoonline.com. The
first article that I decided to tackle is about open source
development in the enterprise, and I hope you can help me.
In essence: if you write open source software as part of your
salaried job, I want to ask a few questions about how you've worked
out the logistics or legal details with your management. (And I'd
be *really* happy if I can quote open source women! Yay for
visibility!)
I know, from Evans Data research, that a rather high percentage of
software developers write open source code, whether on their own
time or the company's clock; some meaningful percentage of those
developers also contribute the changes back to the open source
community. And one of the factoids mentioned in passing at the
Gartner Open Source summit in September was that a growing
percentage of corporations are paying their own developers to work
on open source projects, some of whom do so full time. IBM is
probably the easiest example, with several people on the Eclipse
project employed by IBM.
I'm looking for salaried open source developers, those developers'
management, or those who can speak personally to the issue -- so I
can write an article to provide guidance to IT Managers who are
contemplating such options.
I hope to create management guidelines for companies who want to
take advantage of open source code, by adding the features they
need to the existing code base, then contributing the enhancements
back to the development community. But doing so can raise
intellectual property questions (such as "what does it mean for
'work for hire'?")... and perhaps several other issues that make
lawyers and CEOs uncomfortable. I'd like to get your input on the
issues the open source developer and her manager need to deal with.
If you're willing to chat with me (ideally in e-mail), drop me a
line at eschindler@cxo.com and I'll inundate you with questions. If
not... I apologize for interrupting your day. <smile>
Esther Schindler
senior online editor, cio.com
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-women-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact
listmaster@lists.debian.org
Reply to: