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How can McVoy enforce this kind of crap?
How can McVoy enforce this kind of crap?
Posted Oct 4, 2005 4:29 UTC (Tue) by aotheoverlord (guest, #3993)In reply to: How can McVoy enforce this kind of crap? by dskoll
Parent article: Mercurial loses a developer
Actually, most employees sign an agreement with their employer that signs over all code written by said employee to the employer(*). It's the reason that many GNU projects require copyright assignments signed by a contributor's employer before they will accept code from that person.
Assuming such an agreement exists between this employee and his employer, then it would stand to reason that code contributed to Mercurial is actual "owned" by the employer which is therefore in violation of the BitKeeper license the company has with Larry.
(*) While I doubt this has been tested in the courts, this usually extends beyond code written by the employee expressly for the employer, and includes all code written, including that written in the persons spare time. Be careful what you sign the next time you take a new job!
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