>>I am interested in the ethics and common legalities of using your framework in more than one job. Perhaps you bought a framework, then modified and adapted it. Perhaps you work for a company at one time and are an independent consultant at another. Maybe on one contract you own the code, and on another one the client does. This problem hasn't come up for me yet because the different jobs I have had involved different languages, many of them obscure.
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>>It seems to me that your framework is the body of your knowledge and experience, which you must bring to all your jobs. But it is also code, which most employers will not allow you to take home. How do people resolve it?
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>I work on the general principal of:
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>What I do is yours (real property). How I do it is mine (intellectual property).
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>If I develop a framework or classlib while under the employ of a client, the client owns it and I must ask for their permission to re-use it. If I bring in a framework or classlib into a project it remains *mine* and they must negotiate with me to re-use it in any form outside of the original application that they contracted me to provide.
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>I haven't had a problem negotiating contracts on these terms in the past, but maybe I've just been lucky.
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>This stuff is going to get increasingly important as applications tend to componentize in the future.
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All employers do not want their competitors to get something
they paid for. That will never change. We programmers grow intellectually
from job to job. I use my knowledge and experience to better my self as we all do. My first grade teachers taught me how to read. Does this mean she owns my right to read? Once, I had to signed a disclosure statement that said: "We own all the computer knowledge you hand down to your children." I had to sign if I wanted to job and I needed the job at the time. The subject of WHO OWNS WHAT is silly. People are always going to sue for anything.