[ILUG] GPL and non-disclosure agreements

[Justin Mason]

"John P. Looney" said:

>  Either way, many changes you make to GPL'd code won't be applicable to
> the companies' business, and you can always submit it, and don't ask
> permission anyway ;)

That's pretty much the case alright; most mods to GPL'd code you might
make, are at a much lower level than the core business logic, e.g. porting
compiler/command-line-tool code, fixing bugs, etc.

As Kate said, it makes pure sense to provide your modifications back,
otherwise you will run into a world of pain when version 2.0 comes out and
you have to re-patch your mods into the code, because you didn't take the
time to provide them to the community.

Also, if the software's license is GPL or similar, you have no choice ;)


If you *do* run into a situation whereby modifications to GPL software
being passed back is an issue with your bosses or HR dept -- then that's a
problem, and the legalese needs to be worked around at a higher level, ie.
with your boss' help.

This should be do-able, as I really doubt that any sane company would let
an obscure paragraph in the standard HR hiring agreement stand in the way
of a sane development path -- and if the company *does* act like that,
you'd probably have much bigger problems with their bureaucratic
tendencies then ;)


Eh, I think this topic, or something close, is on either slashdot or
kuro5hin.org at the moment as well BTW.

--j.