OpenSAML user discussion

[Prakash Yamuna <>]

The question is where is an individual's
freedom/rights in all this?

Daily, I perform other tasks/actions (other than code
contributions) that do not require my company's
approval; then why is it when it comes to code
contributions that one needs approval?

A related issue is it is almost impossible to say that
your contributions do not build on your past and
present experience in various fields - even if they
are disparate fields.

Suppose one would like to contribute multiple open
source projects then how would that work?

Of course given the fact that the distinction b/w work
at office and home is blurred - this makes things much
more complicated...but where does one draw a line?

In my particular case, it makes sense for me to get
company approval, since I am in the security industry
but if one were to be working on a totally orthogonal
aspect as a corporate developer then why does the
company need to know?

May not be relevant to my particular situation - but I
thought I might as well ask the questions as others
might find it useful...

thanks,
prakash
--- RL 'Bob' Morgan 
<>
 wrote:

> 
> On Fri, 28 Jan 2005, Tom Scavo wrote:
> 
> > Does this apply to faculty as well as staff?  If
> so, how is it possible 
> > that so many faculty and staff work as consultants
> or have private 
> > businesses on the side?
> 
> The fact of the employer/university having control
> of the IPR that the 
> employee produces doesn't mean that they say no to
> consulting 
> arrangements, it just means the employee has to ask.
>  In my experience, 
> with professional staff like Scott and me
> universities are happy to say 
> yes to a moderate level of outside consulting
> because it keeps us happy 
> and still employed at the U.  Faculty is a whole
> nother thing, since of 
> course academic work is traditionally controlled by
> the academic who 
> creates it.  The whole world of research spinoffs
> taking advantage of 
> university IPR and infra is, uh, exciting and
> complicated, I'm no expert.
> 
> The issue of university staff programmers
> contributing to open source 
> projects has been raised in some of the IT policy
> meetings I attend, and 
> basically it boils down to just one aspect of
> overall management of your 
> programmers:  management should of course always be
> aware of what their 
> people are spending time/money/equipment on, and
> ensure that that work is 
> meeting organizational goals.  I expect that the use
> of contributor 
> agreements will increase, and will promote
> info-sharing between 
> programmers and management about what they're
> actually up to.  And this is 
> why standard governance and licensing methods for OS
> projects is 
> important, so the managers making decisions about
> this can have a clue 
> about what's happening to the OS stuff their staff
> is producing.
> 
> > Where can I read about this, do you know?
> 
> You might poke around at http://www.autm.net/, the
> Association of 
> University Technology Managers.
> 
>   - RL "Bob"
> 
> 



                
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