> OK. It came down to proof. They had an army of lawyers to
 > prepare "proof" that I wrote it in the company time.

 dn> Actually, Nhan, lawyers don't matter at this point since it isn't a
 dn> question of law. It is essentially a matter of producing facts to
 dn> satisfy a court on the balance of probabilities. That's tougher than
 dn> it sounds. The burden of proof to do that is on the complainant.

Good news. Thanks :-)

 dn> In short, if you want to release souce code you should really clear it
 dn> with your employer first before doing so, irrespective of on who's
 dn> time you wrote it purely to be on the safe side (unless of course the
 dn> code in question is completely unrelated to any work you actually do
 dn> and therefore cannot ever be construed to have been made at the
 dn> direction of your employer). In this case, the courts will often
 dn> favour the employer due to the nature of contract of employment. While
 
Thanks again for pointing it out. I've been doing this (on the safe side)
but had thought that it was not necessary.

 dn> Back to the original subject - if a piece of code is (uncontested) in
 dn> the public domain, no-one can later claim ownership, and they
 dn> certainly can't sue anyone else for using it. 
 
My concern is when a PD code is considered uncontested. Is there a time limit?
 
As a programmer, I want my PD code used by as many people as possible. On
the other hand, I want to use PD code in our systems at work but the legal
staff is always against it. They don't want the department to be involved
in any lawsuit and provided all sorts of argument ...

 > Until then, I continue to put a PD notice in my code, with due reservation.

 dn> You're free to do what you wish, as always.

Taking Steph's kind advice, from now on, I'll put a "released to
publid domain" and a "licence to use" to be on the safe
side...

Thanks again for your comments. Sorry for the provocativeness of the
original message, I wanted to be sure of getting a helpful reply :-)


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