Intellectual Property Blues
There are a lot of neat things about working for a big, innovative Silicon Valley company, but there are also occasional downsides. One of them is that when you join up, you are often asked to sign an intellectual property agreement that somewhat limits your freedom to pursue your own pet projects. I understand the rationale for this, of course, since intellectual property is a tech company’s most valuable resource, but the damnable Interweb is always filling my head with crazy ideas, and it still frustrates me sometimes that I can’t share some of them with the rest of the world.
Last weekend for example, I decided that I’ve been getting out far too much lately, so I stayed home and coded the bulk of an interesting freeware Cocoa app I’ve been contemplating for some time now. It’s in pretty solid shape at this point, and I’m very excited about it, so ordinarily I would simply unleash my creation upon the waiting blogosphere. Now, though, I would have to think twice about doing something like that.
This is not to say that said app will never see the light of day, of course—just that I have to get permission through the proper channels, who have to agree that my creation doesn’t conflict with the company’s interests. I guess we’ll see what happens…