What you propose is a free market solution - make property out of it. (And I don't think free market is actually desirable for most people but that's for anothe

What you propose is a free market solution - make property out of it. (And I don't think free market is actually desirable for most people but that's for another debate.) From a practical point of view, it's complicated to dual license their code to the employer. If the employer refuses to license it, then the employee has to find the job which lets him license it (if he wishes to use it). That may be difficult. In other words, if you have software as property, the idea "I want to work on the same code base in the future for a living" may contradict with someone else's idea "I am paying for it therefore you do what I want". In theoretical free market this should work out, but in reality there is a lot of frictions.