okay, i work (currently) as a temp for a fairly large food/clothing company

recently, the 'group' i work within, in the R&D department, decided that we needed a solution to some of the paper-trail logs that clutter up our workflow

anyways, after others tried to find a solution, i decided to develop a web-based worklog tailored to my department's needs. i started with nsnnuke, which had just made a major change to 'Open Site Manager'. the major change broke some of the CMS, and added new features that weren't well documented, so i decided to go with Xoops2 instead. i ported the few functions that i had already created, and continued from there

after about 2 weeks of coding between higher-priority work projects, i now have a pretty much complete module (minus admin-side for the moment, since admin features weren't really thought of until the past few days)

it makes good use of the smarty template system, accomplishes many abilities with a not-too-large list of functions, and has a few javascript tweaks that probably added a week onto the development time by itself, since i'm not familiar with javascript and i had to tailor the examples that i found to my own needs



what my conundrum is that, after getting this far, and everyone liking the work done thus far, i've hit a brick wall: the I.T. department doesn't want to give us space on the webservers (especially since XOOPS is MySQL oriented, not oracle...), and my supervisor doesn't want to purchase a mid-range machine for department-specific server purposes

the supervisor had the bright idea that if I.T. doesn't want to allow us to continue with my developed app that has mysql+php+apache requirements, then we should give I.T. the code, have them recode it for asp+oracle, and then they would be responsible for all future feature requests, fixes, etc.. (kinda like an ultimatum to the IT dept... saying either let us do it our way, or make it painful for yourself..)


i think that's a clever ultimatum, except that i don't want someone else taking my project, and i don't want to lose control over my own code..


furthermore, a coworker and i believe that i might be the legal owner of the code, since it was developed on my *own* test server, and i am a Temp worker (aka Contractor)

if that is the case, it's mine to do with as I wish. if it is mine to do with as I wish, then what do you think I should do with the code? Sell it to my employer if they decide to use it? or give them an ultimatum saying they can only have the code if they hire me as a full employee? or can anyone think of GPL uses this code could be applied for in the XOOPS environment?


i'm just looking for some feedback, so any ideas or comments or suggestions are welcome

thanks

Did you sign a contract between both yourself and the company you are contracted to regarding the outlining and development of this module?

Did you receive payment and where you assigned this job by the people you are are working for?

If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then you are legally bound to hand over the code whether you like it or not, and the truth of the matter is, it's not yours.

If the answer is no, then under GPL/GNU, it is really open source and you can claim the work as your own.

nope, it was rather informal, my actual job there is to enter data specs given to our department. when the need for this 'electronic' worklog was identified, i said that i could create a web-based solution, they said go ahead, so i developed it during work and personal time

what do ya think about that?

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Then the code is yours do do what you want with. If this informal, no monies involed, no signing of contracts etc then you are quite within your rights to say that the code belongs to you and you do not need to hand it over, unless a fee was invloved

only money paid was regular hourly wage, and that is through the temp agency, not direct from sara lee


/me wonders how i could use this code, lol...
btw, it was a good learning experience, first xoops2 module from scratch

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Well done, welcome to the world of XOOPS developers

I am sure that someone in xoop will find your module usable

Join the development team at the dev site and you should get lots of help from them

applied, waiting to be approved

I don't think there is any way that you can say the code doesn't belong to the company. Even if you didn't sign a specific contract for this code directly with sara lee I'll bet the temp agency did and it covers everything you do for sara lee, including any side jobs.

It belongs to them for sure. But I don't see a problem with "rewriting" the code for your own use. Welcome to XOOPS and I hope you contribute some code. Just don't expect to have exclusive rights to the code you wrote for them. Once you're gone they won't do anything with it anyway, they are already stuck on their own systems.

I would agree with DonXoop here - you are the author and can do what you want with the code, since it must be GNU/GPL licensed. However, if you are an employee in a company (even a temp) I would think that what you do in your working time for them, they can use, too.

So basically, you can give out or sell the code to anyone you want, but you cannot restrict its use to the company, you made it for or the people, who buy it (in plain terms: Since you spent your working time doing this for the company, they have a right to use it. They cannot prevent you from selling the code or giving it away to other people, and you cannot prevent those people from giving it to someone else).

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I totally disagree with these statements, There is no mention that he was actually employed by the temp company for this purpose and if you noticed, he actually said that he decided to write this module himself and was not asked to do so by either the temp or the company he was contracted with.