mpedrummer2

Here's a weird little question for all of you...

I have recently been promoted by the company I've been working for to be a full-time programmer. Previously, I had a few pet projects, but was mainly employed as a tech support rep.

Anyway, while not employed by the company in a programming capacity, and outside of company time, I created a PHP script to manage/verify form input. It uses an OOP approach, makes building user-input-based applications much easier, and I'm really proud of it.

I would like to release the script to whomever would want to use it (GPL, or whatever). I would also like to use it as part of applications that I'm developing within the company now.

By my interpretation of the GPL, I could make a non-distributed modification to use at work (as an employee) that would be protected by a NDA, as long as the company never tried to distribute it. I could then continue development on the GPL version as an independant programmer.

First off, is that interpretation correct?

Second...if I modified a GPL script that someone else wrote, I could submit the modifications as reccommendations for future versions...if I made a modification/bug fix at work on my own script, and "suggested" it for the GPL version, would that be completely shaky ground? Or if I didn't make the modification at work, and just modified the GPL version, and then downloaded the new version for work...

I dunno...I'm trying not to get screwed here. My main concern is that the company will see it as their property, since it was written by an employee of theirs. I'm already using the script for other commercial projects, so I can't transfer ownership of the script to the company even if I did want to.

MPEDrummer

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