Nginx was developed not on company time/resources. I am sure Igor was careful to do it by law, but it doesn't really matter in russia. They can detain you and kick you until you give them what they want, and there is nothing you could do. There are countless examples.

I think you will run into conflict of interest issues with having your employer pay you to use your product. It might fly at some places, but I would be hesitant of running afoul of all manner of issues if there could be a perception that you are leveraging your employment position to profit your own company. Especially if your employer accepts money from the government.

I agree with the first two though. I personally am leery of suggesting the use of my own products and services to a current employer, and would only do it if it's very clear that there's both not other great options and that there's not a conflict of interest (decision maker is in another department for instance) and recognize that I may need to quit my job to avoid the perception of a conflict of interest or legal issues with government grants or other awards that may prohibit employees from also being vendors.

It's definitely riskier than just not using your personal projects at work unless your employer is actively pursuing using it fully independently (ex: your project is the only good solution to a problem and it's unreasonable for your employer to be the only people who can't use it). But even then, I'm largely unable to do work that only I can possibly do (i.e. I worked on two projects as an independent contractor for my current employer before they were my part-time employer) for people in another department despite being part time simply because it's too much of a mess to get it approved. I could probably get it done, but it's a huge hassle and not worth it for $1.

But your current employer might also take major issue with you having a side business selling to their competitors stuff that they want to use, regardless of the technical legality... at the least you might get fired even if you've done nothing legally wrong it might be against their employment guidelines to do this if you're a full time employee. I specifically chose to be part time because I still do contract work on the side (and make more money doing that than I do at the part time job, but I really enjoy my part time job so I don't mind).

> I think you will run into conflict of interest issues with having your employer pay you to use your product. It might fly at some places, but I would be hesitant of running afoul of all manner of issues if there could be a perception that you are leveraging your employment position to profit your own company.

I think when it's literally "pay me one dollar for a company-wide license, so there's mutual consideration for license and it's clear what the arrangement is"... one does not need to worry about a substantial fiscal conflict of interest or appearance of impropriety.

I mean, it's a whole lot of work to squeeze one more dollar out of your employer ;)

It's not about amounts, it's about perception and policies. The idea of selling a product even remotely related to my job description to my current employer just sounds like a whole bag of nasty waiting to drop.

What happens when you leave the company and try to increase the price to make a business out of it? Did you create a situation through the course of your employment such that the company you left is now dependent on your products? Would they have made different choices in what tool to use if it cost more at the time? Will even bringing up the idea of charging your employer cost you a lot of social capital with your supervisor and make you look like you're aiming to resign soon to work on a new project and aren't fully committed to your job?

Will they expect you to offer software for a $1 indefinite license including free updates for life or not including support or upgrades? Will they balk when your support or custom features cost $200/hr and cry foul? Companies are led by MBAs. They don't want to spend money and are very good at avoiding it at your expense.

Will they use their vastly larger capital to sue you for it, if indeed it is critical to them, arguing that if you felt it was useful enough to the company to sell it to them then it was part of your job responsibilities to work on it (excepting the case where you did the project prior to starting work at the company). Will you somehow be able to prove that it was done outside of work hours and relied in no way on your confidential knowledge of what the company does?

It's just messy and the potential for really really messy. You might manage to pull it off, but I personally would not try this unless the case was extremely clear cut and everyone involved knew everything so that no one could retroactively claim it was done in an underhanded way. But I was a boy scout so I learned that if you aren't willing to be totally transparent in your approach you probably actually don't think it's ethical. Clearly not applicable to today's top business schools, of course...

> It's not about amounts, it's about perception and policies. The idea of selling a product even remotely related to my job description to my current employer just sounds like a whole bag of nasty waiting to drop.

The discussion here relates to open source stuff. You give your company a bypass to the license agreement (attribution requirements, etc) in exchange for $1. That's a small business benefit, and in turn you create a clear papertrail of ownership with consideration. Yes, everyone would do this eyes wide open.

You can set the terms however fits the requirements of all involved. If you leave, they are an open source user like any other. Maybe they are allowed to redistribute without attribution, etc, indefinitely. Maybe it includes giving you the right to say that <employer> is using the package.

You do this when your employer already knows you tinker on open source, and a project is getting serious enough that it deserves to have its IP rights explicitly protected.

> Will they use their vastly larger capital to sue you for it, if indeed it is critical to them, arguing that if you felt it was useful enough to the company to sell it to them then it was part of your job responsibilities to work on it (excepting the case where you did the project prior to starting work at the company). Will you somehow be able to prove that it was done outside of work hours and relied in no way on your confidential knowledge of what the company does?

That's the whole point here-- you demonstrate that the company considered it yours at that point in time, and entered into a license agreement for it.

I have been on both sides of deals like this. Not all employers will do it, but it is a not-unreasonable way to protect everyone's interests and record what the parties considered the ownership to be at the time of employment. I've also sold company-owned code to an employee for $1 and an indefinite license because we didn't want to maintain it anymore.

I think we basically agree then. It just needs to all be transparent. There's just an awful lot of different ways things can go wrong and it's hard to know which ones will end up being relevant. I agree that it could be a good method for establishing clear separation. Just very tricky.

The thing is I am not sure if Igor was developing Nginx on his own time. IANAL as well, but I am not sure if it counts if part of the work was done from his Rambler workplace.

According to Russian laws it does not matter. Igor was hired by Rambler to do system administration job, he was never assigned any software development job - that means Igor owns the copyright. His ex-boss is confirming this (in Russian: https://roem.ru/12-12-2019/281134/rambler-nginx/#comment-292...)

Sorry "Never give work full rights to everything you make on your own time." is not going to work there is to much precedent in US employment law.

Precedent doesn't come into it (until it does), it's all about what's in your contract.

Work for Red Hat? You own your free software contributions, even those made at work. Work for Google? They own even the small lump of green putty you found in your armpit one midsummer morning.

Many companies will apparently put in grab-all clauses but back down (but Google won't) if you call them on it.