IANAL, cannot comment on the legality, but as far as I’m concerned the comment about the department being too dependent on you is the most salient point of your entire post. There’s a whole universe of lawsuits and actions that can be filed and are not filed because companies calculate that they’ll extract a better return from a “live and let live” approach.
There’s probably an ocean of open source that is in a work product gray area, and the companies just don’t care enough to do anything (think “I saw Alex working on a 2D physics game library after successfully deploying our latest healthcare platform feature. It will be of no use to us, and Alex is a good dev, let’s let it slide.”)
A lot of copyright infringement goes un-acted on because it just doesn’t matter to the rights holders. But if they’re in a jurisdiction where they can enforce their work product agreement and then management changes, a new greedier manager might decide to claim Alex’s 2D physics engine on the almost-zero chance it becomes useful to them in the future. Probably not the smartest move, possibly a totally legal move. (But what do I know, IANAL)
hehe. Yeah that is indeed a salient clause there. Especially since I'm highly underpaid. Both me and my employer knows that finding my replacement is going to be tricky. Sucks money wise but gives me a great work life balance. :-D
There’s probably an ocean of open source that is in a work product gray area, and the companies just don’t care enough to do anything (think “I saw Alex working on a 2D physics game library after successfully deploying our latest healthcare platform feature. It will be of no use to us, and Alex is a good dev, let’s let it slide.”)
A lot of copyright infringement goes un-acted on because it just doesn’t matter to the rights holders. But if they’re in a jurisdiction where they can enforce their work product agreement and then management changes, a new greedier manager might decide to claim Alex’s 2D physics engine on the almost-zero chance it becomes useful to them in the future. Probably not the smartest move, possibly a totally legal move. (But what do I know, IANAL)