Another copyright question

[ted leslie]

if you are a contractor, you may have more ownership to it then you think (which is none if you were not).

rewriting a program in a different language, essentially a token/form replacement,
maybe a bit more,
isn't going to cut it, 
a program is "how it does stuff", not what its written in.

you wouldn't violate copyright necessarily, and that I don't think is the point,
you would violate your employment agreement with your employer,
which could see you dismissed with cause, and you would have no way to fight it,
and also open to $$ damages.

You would have to make full effort to rewrite the program from design up.
You may even have stuff in your employment contract that would prevent you 
from even doing this (i.e. would you be in competition, or have harmed your employers revenue?).

You just have to abide by the terms of your emp. contract plain and simple.
(and the general rules regarding property produced for an employer).
If you like your job... i suggest you fully disclose your intentions to your boss ...
(if you want to carry forward with it).

On the positive side, if what you did was straight forward engineering,
and not something your employer cares about existing (With respect to competition),
you can build it again, this time faster, because of what you've learned,
and make it even better, and that would be ok, but then you still might be pissing of your employer :(



-tl

On Mon, 20 Apr 2009 21:44:08 -0400
Viktor Pavlenko <vvp-iRg7kjdsKiH3fQ9qLvQP4Q at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> I wrote a program at work because I couldn't find a good open source
> solution. Obviously, it is now a property of my employer. Initial
> request to my boss to make it available under GPL didn't meet
> understanding. So I shut up.
> 
> But what if I re-wrote it in a completely different language,
> preserving the functionality and user interface (command line) as is
> and released under GPL, would it still be a copyright violation?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> -- 
> Viktor
> 
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-- 
ted leslie <tleslie-RBVUpeUoHUc at public.gmane.org>
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