My IBM IP agreement (was Re: related commercial projects)

[Manoj Kasichainula <ma...@io.com>]

On Sat, Nov 08, 1997 at 05:27:45PM -0800, Brian Behlendorf wrote:
> At 12:19 PM 10/31/97 -0600, Manoj Kasichainula wrote:
> >
> >Well, the word is that I can't submit anything here unless it goes
> >thorugh someone at IBM who decides if I can give it to you. Sounds
> >like a "no" to me.
> 
> Even intellectual property created on your own time not paid for by IBM?
> Sounds illegal to me.

Well, sounds annoying to me, but since IBM is in the web server
business, they can probably claim legality, at least enough so that
I'd use up all my money defending my self. <g> Seriously, though, they
don't cover IP in all aspects, just stuff that has to do with their
business. The problem is that their business covers just about
everything related to computers. And, since I'm a salaried employee,
one interpretation of things says that all my time is their time,
although I'll try to convince them otherwise. 

I'm traveling to New York in a few hours for a conference, and it so
happens that I'll be meeting with the person who originally told me
"no." I'm going to try to convince him to change his mind, telling him
that I'm not going to come up with anything amazing here, and that you
all are a lot smarter than me anyway, and that I'll learn a lot from
doing this, and anything else I can come up with on the way.

If you have any tips which might help me convince him, please send
them my way directly rather than to the list, so I can be sure to get
them quickly. Thanks!

-- 
Manoj Kasichainula - manojk at io dot com - http://www.io.com/~manojk/
"The universe is in fact made up of Fabio." - scientist on _Eek the Cat_

Re: My IBM IP agreement

[Manoj Kasichainula <ma...@io.com>]

On Sun, Nov 09, 1997 at 12:37:37PM -0600, Manoj Kasichainula wrote:
> I'm traveling to New York in a few hours for a conference, and it so
> happens that I'll be meeting with the person who originally told me
> "no." I'm going to try to convince him to change his mind, telling him
> that I'm not going to come up with anything amazing here, and that you
> all are a lot smarter than me anyway, and that I'll learn a lot from
> doing this, and anything else I can come up with on the way.

Well, the meeting was a partial success. He was quite willing to let
me do this, but the legal department wants to know what specific parts
of the code I would be working on. I've tried to explain that this
would probably be difficult if I were to contribute code for the core
(which I'd like to do once things get started on 2.0). So, it'd really
be helpful if someone could send something (probably personally)
describing how development generally works during non-code freeze
times.  Are programmer duties generally partitioned neatly, or is it
more of a free-for-all? Thanks!

I've also asked about libap stuff specifically and am awaiting a
response.

-- 
Manoj Kasichainula - manojk at io dot com - http://www.io.com/~manojk/
"I realized it was Michael Bolton, and my bowels let loose." - Butthead