I'm not concerned about people stealing my code. I'm concerned about losing my job, which is the consequence of transmitting proprietary code over the network to an unknown 3rd party.

Also plain legal implication. Our code could contain some protected information (transient debugging code mostly) and it is illegal to transmit it to a third party first because of DNA our company has signed, and then with regards to data protection act (credit card information, name, address).

At the very least, the service would need to be validated quite extensively.

Tell that to a tech Fortune 500's legal department.

Not even. I work for a 30 person company and I can't even share my own personal code with third parties.

Wait what

Yep... I'm exaggerating but I did trade some freedom to post whatever code I want wherever for a better salary. It's not uncommon for contracts to give employers ownership of any ideas/code an employee comes up with, or to specifically prohibit freelancing or contribution to open source.

For others reading this thread - there are only 8 states that provide restrictions on what these contracts can say regarding what ideas/code are owned by the company. In the other 42, most contracts won't care if you used company resources, or if your work is in an entirely different industry - the employer will own what you make if they're paying you for the month in which you made it. It's not very nice, but it's not like you're being cheated when you choose to take a salary.

http://www.intellectualpropertylawfirms.com/resources/intell...

There's plenty wrong about California, but this is one of the nice parts about living here.

I'm in a similar situation - had to have a detailed discussion with the our local legal counsel about what I can/cannot opensource. Long story short, for personal projects: a) I cannot use my company provided laptop. b) It cannot overlap with my employer's current or future business interests.

That sounds absolutely terrible... but to each their own I suppose.

Indeed to the latter bit. I'm completely okay with it; otherwise I wouldn't have signed the contract. Kind of irritating that someone downvoted me too.

Thanks to the good Samaritan who gave my point back :)

Also, it's totally reasonable for some companies to have restrictions like this. At my company, for example, the primary business is some really smart math guys coming up with market models. By programming these models, a programmer will get algorithms and ideas which belong to the company in their mind. Depending on the nature of a personal/open source project, one could even inadvertently use the company's ideas--putting the company's property out in the open and potentially benefiting competitors.

That doesn't change the fact that sending code to a third party is explicitly disallowed by many employers.

The problem is that it is not his code to begin with. So somebody cares: the employer, the owner of the code.