Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[Paul Iadonisi]

On Tue, 2002-08-13 at 17:12, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> I think you are right on here. But, many times economics dictates. 
> 
> I don't want to get into an intellectual property discussion, but when you 
> work for a company, anything you develop (at least on company time or on 
> company property) belongs to the company, not you.

  I don't disagree that this is the way that it is today.  I just argue
that it's simply not right and I seek to correct in any way I can.  Call
me an extremist if you like, but I view programmers (I use the term
loosely to refer to programmers, sysadmins, web designers) as artists. 
The work for hire view is flawed at its core.  Yes I know I'm talking
about thirty plus years of an industry standard mode of working.  But
its thirty years of individual artists being ripped off by
corporations.  Note the parallels to the recording industry.

>                                                   The more sticky issue is 
> anything you might develop outside the company. Most colleges have very 
> strict rules on this for their faculty and reasearchers. 

  From the point of view of what I believe is *right*, it's not sticky
at all.  What I develop on my own time on my own equipment is mine. 
Period.

> I've been a consultant/contractor for about 15 years. It is very clear that 
> I may have other clients. However as an employee, my primary company may 
> (legitimately) have a say on any projects I may have outside the company. 
> For one, the company's intellectual property itself is a very valuable 
> asset. It stands to reason that they don't want me to use my knowledge in 
> another company that could be in competition. 

  I stand by my view that the so called intellectual property has little
value if it is not shared.  It's funny money when 'separated' from the
person who devised it.  And it's usually not unique.  Corporations just
want investors to believe it's unique and then proceed to enforce its
uniqueness through patents and other regimes.

> A few years ago, when I worked for HP as an onsite consultant at Raytheon, 
> I also had a part time contract at Polaroid. Most of the Polaroid stuff was 
> done at home on my Alpha Linux system. 

  I was a full timer at Raytheon for seven years.  For three and a half
of those years, I worked on a really cool build tool that I still
believe is far ahead of the Unix standard 'make'.  And I'm royally
pissed off that I don't have access to that code.  Raytheon isn't using
it anymore and it would have zero impact on the company to release it as
GPLed code.  I'm sure Hell will freeze over before that happens due some
board members imagined view that it has some value to be protected.

  I'm afraid we are just going to have to agree to disagree here.  I've
said on a few occasions that I lean much more into the FSF camp than the
OSI camp.  GPL over BSD.  Free over proprietary.

-- 
-Paul Iadonisi
 Senior System Administrator
 Red Hat Certified Engineer / Local Linux Lobbyist
 Ever see a penguin fly?  --  Try Linux.
 GPL all the way: Sell services, don't lease secrets