Programming

Not a lawyer but from my understanding of intellectual property: You wrote it on company time, so it is the companies code. Publishing it without explicit approval would be copyright infringement.

Just rewrite it with different lines but same result fuck em. Down votes incoming

Check your employment contract. If that includes an NDA or a confidentiality agreement, the company may own your design as well as any code produced. Writing the program from scratch a second time may still end up being company property.

Given that they didn't put your program into production, it's unlikely they would pursue you legally for releasing a new version on your own.

The only real answer here is talk to an actual lawyer rather than a bunch of Joe Blows on the internet. Case in point: Laws will vary depending on country and you haven't specified what country you're in. The set of laws you're subject to are possibly entirely different than the set of laws each commenter here is familiar with. Never take legal advice from the internet.

But if you're only looking to publish the source code as a resume item, it's not worth the legal exposure or time/money to talk to a lawyer. Find something else to write and put on your resume.

Not a lawyer, but worked closely with them in the past. It REALLY depends on your employment contract. Changing variable names and language still makes it a derivative work, so it would depend on the original license. I'm assuming it doesn't have a license which would mean either you or the company owns the copyright: depends on your employment contract. Whether you're a contractor or full time also affects ownership.

Without ownership or a license, you do not have the legal right to copy the work or make a derivative of it.

I'm not clear on whether you actually wrote any code though. If that's the case (that no code was written) then I'm not really sure how that works out. If you do post it and they find out, AND they're mad about it, you could definitely get fired. I'm not sure if there could also be legal trouble or not.

If you need it for a resume item, you can just list it on your resume and talk about it. You could also implement it on your own time (but not share it until you're sure you're safe from legal action), that way you could talk about tradeoffs you've made, etc. in the real implementation.

In general, if you're not sure and you're worried about getting sued, you should ask a lawyer.

Meh, everyone scaring you into thinking you don't own your own mind.

Assuming your boss is not the dangerous kind (beyond legal threats), and if the goal is to make it FOSS, then do it using an alias first. Do it differently. Use components/libs/algos from other people at first, even if they are not perfect. Make those parts easily pluggable/replaceable which would be good design anyway. The code then wouldn't be wholly yours, not even your alias self.

You can join the project later with your real identity as an interested domain expert (maybe a bit after not working for the same boss). Start contributing. Become a maintainer. And maybe take over after a while. You can start replacing non-optimal components/libs/algos with better ones piecemeal.

Oh, and if Rust wasn't the choice of implementation, use it this time.

If you just care about the resume, then write on your resume: "have experience in doing this sort of stuff." Recruiters aren't going to look into GitHub to study your code.

If you care about getting the code used or sold, I'd first consider finding the next potential client to make use of whatever the program does. Their need will likely be different, so you'll need to rewrite it anyway. You then have both the client and a new product on your hands.

Did they license the code?

Is there a clause in your employment agreement about the company owning anything you create? IBM does this, and it’s total bullshit.

Just change the language used to write it, if possible.

check carefully what you signed. If you didn't sign anything saying otherwise, there's nothing to prevent you from doing it.

If there's something, you could still work around it (e.g. remove company secrets).

If the resulting product is provable better, then it's objectively not the same thing you did for your boss.

After checking all of this, your local FSF might give you free legal advice to get going (keep all notes/correspondence secure for later if anything comes up. It proves you tried to act responsibly).

It depends in the country you are.

If you want to show of your skills, why not write an article about it. This way you don't publish company property (maybe only snippets of code) and the viewer can read your reasons on why you made certain decisions.

But do not do this without consent of the company. If the company likes it, you could even start your article something along the lines of "here at %company% we like to write good code...". Than it is a win-win. I see this a lot on sites like medium.com

I dealt with a similar situation by simply purchasing the code from my employer. I guess that technically it was a form of licensing, because we both had the right to use, modify, and resell as we saw fit as long as there were no infringements on branding or trademarks.

They may not offer favourable terms, but it might be worth asking.

Writing it in a different language should be enough to dodge copyright law as it is a completely different implementation utilising different dependency technologies.

Won't do shit against patents or trade secrets though, and your program could be covered by both. Also, as others have stated, check your contract for abusive (imo) but legally permissible code copyright clauses, such as 'everything you make in your spare time is ours'

-- Not legal advice-- If you have evidence that it got scrapped for good, even if it's copyright infringement, they can't claim any damages. They, at best, can DMCA GitHub, but you're VERY unlikely to get sentenced guilty in a trial (in the event of one, which won't ever happen because they know).

Have a discussion with chatGPT about a program you would like to write, use this to assist the development.

Evidence this as the source of the program. There is your re-research. It's likely the implementation will differ substantially as well.

They might own the original program but it's unlikely they broad concept.

Change the font and you are good to go.

I mean, at the risk of being obvious, take your contract to a lawyer or two and ask them.

Without any patern on the idea, on what the programming does, a program doing the same thing can be done.

On the intellectual property theft, the new program should be as much as different as the other one. Different name, different functions, different var, different language, etc. This is to avoid any possible mismatch between the 2 programs. As long as you don't take the code but rewrite it you should be fine.

Talking to a lawyer is mandatory in this case.

I might be naive, but can't you just ask someone from work?

IANAL and you really should ask a lawyer about this. The answer very much depends on your work contract and country of residence (the latter due to the fact that some generic contracts’ statements might be legally unenforceable in specific jurisdictions).

I’ll throw in a random fact: the contract might say that whatever you write as a programmer is still company's property even off the clock and it will be legal in some US states.

This is one of those things where you have to read your employment contract.

If your main job involves generating intellectual property (code, or research or something else) and you live in the US there's probably a clause saying you can't do this without permission. Otherwise, it's probably fine.

However, if you're in the US, they can still fire you whenever they feel like, so if you think this might seriously piss your company off and you need your job, you might want to ask permission first.

If you implement it from fresh then it is a new program. What matters is what your contract says about what you produce - some contracts pay claim to anything you make even outside of working hours.

Also if you rewrite it, while technically it is a fresh project if there are substantial similarities in how you implement it there could be an argument made that you have reused code that belongs to the company. Even if that is technical false it could be something you'd have to defend sometime in the future. As others have said, implementing the program in a different language and using a different methodology wherever possible should help protect against that.

I think the advice others have given that you should review your contract with a lawyer is sound even if this will be FOSS. It's mainly about ensuring you don't inadvertently open yourself to potential legal repercussions down the line, even if your employers at the moment seem benign. If you do work for a company that lays claim to everything you produce even in your off hours then I would strongly recommend you consider leaving or an exit plan, particularly if you are the sort of person who would be working on your own projects for fun or even your own business ventures.