I think we\'ve all been there: You hear of someone say \"hey, wouldn\'t it be ni
ID: 660570 • Letter: I
Question
I think we've all been there:
You hear of someone say "hey, wouldn't it be nice if platform X had feature Y?" You look around (on SO!), the feature really doesn't exist, even though it probably would be useful in many contexts. So it's pretty generic.
Your mind wanders for a bit. "How tough would it be? Well, it'd probably be just a snippet. And an ad-hoc function. And maybe a wrapper." And boom, before you know it, you've spent a dozen hours of your free time implementing a FooFeature that's really neat and generic. The kind of code you might not even have the time to spit and shine at work, that would be a bit rushed and not so documented.
So now you wonder "wouldn't this be useful to others?" And you've got your blog, maybe a CodeProject account, and your colleague who asked if FooFeature exists might, haphazardly, come accross that blog entry, had it existed before they told you. On the otherhand, the NDA agreement. It's sort of vague and general. It doesn't forbid you from coding at home, but it's clear on sharing company code, that's a big NO.
But this isn't company code. Or is it? Or will it be?
So, what do you do with code (that's more than just a snippet) you wrote in your off time with universality in mind but an idea that came from work, and that will most likely be used at work? Can it be published?
Explanation / Answer
Questions similar to this have been asked before. It really depends on the employment agreement (contract) you have with your employer. My personal opinion is that if you did it on your own time outside of work hours, then you can do whatever you want with it, including publishing it as an open source project.
Your safest bet is to talk to your employer about what you have done and get their approval if you are unsure about how to proceed.