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BobJanova wrote: That's only true if the idea is patented.
That is simplistic.
If in fact you do start from scratch and write something similar then, at least in some cases, you are allowed to do that. It depends on implicit and explicit contracts where one is.
However that doesn't stop legal challenges. And in such cases one side will attempt to show that it is a copy (modified or not) and the other will attempt to show it isn't.
Neither is a sure thing.
Given that and presuming that that one really did re-write it then, legally, one can only hope that what one created would be deemed significantly different enough that it would be ruled unique. But at best that is risky.
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Sander Rossel wrote: Suppose I created some libraries at work
Wherever I've worked, any work done for the company becomes the property of the company. Of course, open-source and other publicly available information referenced in these works is not part of the company's IP, even though their code may be included. The terms of use of the open-source licenses always hold.
Sander Rossel wrote: I could re-create them at home in a couple of days
Recreating work based on your learnings is permissible (that's what devs do throughout their career), as long as it doesn't infringe on patents, and even then, may be permissible by licensing use of the patent. Chances are, this will not apply to you.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.
/ravi
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Ravi Bhavnani wrote: Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.
Good, because I was going to sue you if any of the above DID apply to me 
Luckily we don't have patents of any kind. That would suck if I wanted to re-use my idea's 
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Technically, it's only theft if you get caught. Otherwise it's serendipitous coincident development.
Will Rogers never met me.
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Good point!
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Yeah, one Russian programmer who used to work for Goldman Sachs or some such moneyfleabag got several years in prison for doing exactly that.
Can't be arsed to look the thing up. Do the Google search yourself.
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You could always explain to the employer/contract owner that you used various internet sources to develop this library and that corporate citizenship demands that you should share alike.
Get permission to publish it with a liberal OS license. Depending on where you obtained some of the code and the license that applied to that code, you might be legally obligated to share alike.
Barring that, you should be able to recreate it on your own time. Since this is the second time you would be doing it, it should turn out even better than the first implementation. Just make sure that it is a "clean room" implementation.
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I didn't read through the entire thread yet, but this is a no brainer.
You said: "I could re-create them at home in a couple of days."
That is what you need to do. Besides if you hit some snag, just go revisit the spot in the code you are stuck on the next day at work.
The rule of thumb is if you got paid to write some code you do not own that code. Unless you have a written agreement/contract explicitly stating otherwise.
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From reading the comments I'm not sure that I have anything new to add, but I will reiterate what others have said just to make sure the point is clear - it is definitely stealing. Even if you were copying/pasting from code you located on the internet it is still stealing because you found that code during time that you were being paid.
Like Pete and some others that have commented, I have my own company and anyone that works for me (regardless of whether it is full-time or on contract) is required to sign-off the entirety of the work that they create - after all, that's why they're being paid. Check your work agreement because it should clarify some of this for you. If you don't have an agreement then it will come down to whatever is considered "default" for the legalities where you live - in many cases that means that your employer owns your work.
Some others have suggested rewriting the libraries in your own time making sure to change class and variable names to identify it as "yours" and to document the personal time you took to create the libraries. That is definitely one option, but I would suggest that the best way of avoiding any legal mess is talking to your employer. The problem is that all of this quickly falls into very gray area - whether you're talking about creating Bratz while working for Barbie or something much less malicious it will often come down to perception. What are using these libraries for? Are you building a product that is similar to your employers? Is it a competing product? Is it a product that fits to your employer's industry horizontally or vertically? Are the libraries that you're reusing unique to these types of products? If the answer is yes to any of those then you're more likely to be heading down a dark path versus reusing a completely generic library for a completely unrelated product in a completely unrelated industry.
Bottom line - talk to your employer. If you haven't talked to them because you're afraid of the answer then I think that gives you the moral answer to your question right there! You can always go and talk to a lawyer to cover the bases, but I would suggest you're better off spending your time talking to your employer than wasting time and money on a lawyer - after all, isn't it best to know your employer's position before getting a lawyer involved? Oh, and whatever your employer might agree to be sure to get it in writing so that you are both protected.
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I have been in this situation and what we ended up doing was getting management to put an open source license (MIT, APACHE, etc.) on the libraries... not their proprietary finished product but on some of the low level libraries we had written. They agreed and everyone was happy forever. 
Eric
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Simple, go ask your boss, if he says no, then go and read your contract, if it says that anything done in your time is yours, go ahead and recreate the libraries from scratch.
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You can rationalize all you want, but your employer owns that code. Taking it from them would be stealing.
If you can get permission to use the library, do so. In writing. Where its clearly stated that you have permission to use it for outside professional projects. I can't see that happening.
Or, you can just recreate the libraries at home from scratch. Not steal and try to obscure its origin by changing variable names, an actual ground up rewrite. There's always tons of stuff to improve in a rewrite anyway. However, check your IP agreement carefully, many companies' agreements claim to own everything you develop, inside or outside of work.
Instead of any of the above, you could try to convince them to give something back to the community that helped their developers and release an open source fork of that library. Then everybody wins. They win at least in the goodwill & public image departments, and perhaps by having other the community make it better.
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
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That's exactly what my attorney confirmed. If you're developing something (off company time on your own equipment) you can use it as long as it doesn't compete on any level with your employer. My employment agreement reads that any inventions, discoveries, yadda yadda yadda that I make that relate to their product belongs to them whether I do it on my time, equipment or anything else. Now if I come up with something totally outside their business then that's different according to my contract. However yours may be written to say ANYTHING you invent (regardless of whether it relates to their business or not) belongs to them ... then that's it.
In my case this means I can develop a whole bunch of things of my own on my time as long as I'm no competitive threat ... which is actually a very generous way to write it from their end. They don't mind me creating things on my own, just not stuff that will cut into their business.
YMMV
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CodeBubba wrote: which is actually a very generous way to write it from their end. They don't mind me creating things on my own, just not stuff that will cut into their business.
Why would they mind and why is that generous? I call it common sense and courtesy 
Besides, any knowledge you get at home developing your own projects you take to work where it will probably benefit your employer.
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Yeah, I agree. I meant "generous" in the sense that most employee agreements I've seen just flatly state that anything you invent while in their employ is theirs. Potato, Potatoh.
-b
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You can't use it in any other commercial venture, at all. I just spoke with an attorney on a coding issue that was more questionable than this. Even creating a product (code, etc.) that even looks like what your employer is doing while you're under their employ is in violation of copyright unless your employment agreement explicitly states that you can use the code which most of them don't.
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The laws of the USA define a "work-for-hire" provision. If there is a written agreement defining the provisions then they rule unless they are clearly unenforceable on their face, i.e. conflict with common law, etc.
As I understand it, it is the Employers responsibility to shape the work-for-hire provisions. In the absence of a work-for-hire you normally have more rights. That is what my research seems to indicate. Not being a lawyer I can be wrong of course. Just lookup work-for-hire provisions in the laws of your country.
If you are a full-time employee then this is a different issue. Normally you will have to sign a non-compete and employment agreemet that can be full of provisions protecting the employers intellectual property. In this case ask an attorney. Spending $500 on an attorney is better than being sued for $50,000 later.
"Courtesy is the product of a mature, disciplined mind ... ridicule is lack of the same - DPM"
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Yet another web host discussion. I am debating whether to call go daddy or just throw up my arms, pay for "business class" cable and host myself. Sure, it will cost me more but 2 seconds to load a page after warm-up sucks! (To be fair, my page has three network rounds, index=800ms to 1200ms for straight HTML with only a master page) 400 ms for the errata, and another 400 ms for the CSS images).
I wrote a tool to scan my site every minute to "keep it warm" but still : (. It's odd because Shopify, while not as bad, was still kind of bad. Me personally, if a site takes 8 seconds to load I bounce, 2 seconds ,I think about bouncing. So frustrating. (GoDaddy has the 8 seconds cycle, Shopify never more than 2)
The ad above shows Rackspace as an option and I do have an account with them. I might spool up a Windows Server but they have change their pricing model to make Windows boxes a fair amount more pricey. $73/month is not bad but ... well I could build a nice server for that and I already pay for Internet at home. At least then it can be mostly my fault for poor service. Even the CDN's from rackspace were relatively slow and I can't SSL their CDN to my domain 
Why is creating a business so hard, and why do I have to shave so many yaks just to get started?
On the plus side, while putting it altogether I am getting a new-found respect for pricing.
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Honestly, if it is to host this[^], I would not bother the custom solution (or is there more to see than a mail address in the middle of a -fixed-size! - blank page ?)
~RaGE();
I think words like 'destiny' are a way of trying to find order where none exists. - Christian Graus
Entropy isn't what it used to.
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Lol, nah, different one. Programming doesn't really make bank, I am working on something else.
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That's clean and minimal design! It's the UI of the future 
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Large, mostly blank useless boxes!
The UI of the future!
Let's call it...erm... "Modern", yes.
That's a good name for a UI with large mostly blank, useless boxes.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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By god we're going to draw a line in the sand...er not that line this line...er...
Along with Antimatter and Dark Matter they've discovered the existence of Doesn't Matter which appears to have no effect on the universe whatsoever!
Rich Tennant 5th Wave
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To boldly bluff where no one had bluffed before!
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