Publishing an application in public domain

Question

Hi guys,

During my last internship, I took an open source tool and enhanced it as a part of my project. Because of my growing interest in that tool, I took it home and added some more functionalities to make it more useful for others outside and then thought of publishing it.

The original source code is available in public domain without any restrictions, but since I worked on this tool during my internship, I wanted to know whether I have to take permission from my employer before publishing it.

Although I want to publish it, my mind tells me NO, as the code is now a property of my employer.

Thanks in advanced!

Edit 1:

This is what the original tool writer says about the code: "This code is released into the public domain without restriction"

Answer 1

It really depends on what kind of contract you signed with the company that you interned at before joining. Most contracts would make the IP you added to the project the company's IP hence legally you are not allowed to publish it as your own.

You also need to keep in mind that most open-source license agreements necessitate that you release any derivatives under the same licensing agreement. Hence, you wouldn't always be able to commercially publish something that had an open-source component, unless you released your code (or part of your code) as open source.

Answer 2

Usually software written at work is the property of the work place. You should ask for a permission, and then you can release it as an open source project.

As for the open source license, see the various licenses

Answer 3

Yes, if you changed it as part of your work for a company, then it is that company that owns the copyright for what you do. So you cannot publish your changes without permission from your employer. If you were modifying a freely available tool, though, you may want to ask your employer for permission to publish the code; many employers will allow this if it wouldn't significantly affect them to do so.

You say that the original source code was in the public domain. That's fairly rare; most of the time the original source code is still copyrighted, but available under a free license (and sometimes, code is posted online without any license listed, which actually means that it is copyrighted and no permission is given for you to make any copies of it or modify it in any way). So, be careful that you are not accidentally violating anyone's copyright by modifying and distributing the code, or that you are complying with any license conditions on it if there are any.

Answer 4

IANAL, but if you're ABSOLUTELY and CLEARLY sure that the code is in the public domain, you can do whatever you like with it. Any entity, corporate, non-corporate, commercial, non-commercial, individual or group, that releases ANYTHING into the public domain has waived their right to claim copyright on whatever they release. Since it does say in the license file that the code is in the public domain (and with emphasis on 'no restrictions'), it is your legal right and entitlement to do whatever you like with it.