Freeing my code... need some guidance

[David Woolley]

Simon wrote:

> My employer must also have no rights to remove my own rights on those 
> files and they should become "their property" (as my contract says), but 

As noted by others, you may well not have any rights on them in the 
first place.

> they would still be limited to the rights in the license.
> 

>   In other words, I wish that everybody has all the rights on my code 
> and software with the exception to remove the rights I or others have on 
> it and with the exception they have to keep a trace of my name as the 
> original author (...based on the works of Simon...).

Depending on where you live (basically, whether you live in the EU), you 
may have "moral rights", which include the right to be identified as the 
author, as well as property rights.  However, even then software may be 
a special case; I vaguely remember that UK law excludes software from 
moral rights.

> 
>   But there is 2 things that I still wonder about:
> 1) I would like other authors to be added at my side, so anybody should 
> have to right to modify the copyright to include their own names, 
> stating they authored some parts of the code.

Substituting "copyright owners" for authors, that is a requirement for 
many licenses (e.g. GPL), probably necessary to get proper copyright 
protection, and certainly best practice.

> 
> 2) What about the contract I signed with my employer that says something 

"Work for hire" is also part of statute law, so the contract may well 
only be restating what is already the case.



-- 
David Woolley
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