> Wouldn't it be very different if one developed the tools while under employment of a certain company Basically, yes, stuff done on company time is definitely

> Wouldn't it be very different if one developed the tools while under employment of a certain company Basically, yes, stuff done on company time is definitely theirs under 'work for hire'. Totally agree with you. A lot of projects are done as evening/weekend work which is on shaky legal ground - similar to bootstrapping a company while employed. If you have a side activity which is making money, it's simplest to stay quiet about it. Among the limited sample set of "people I know", it's considered extremely crass for a company to try to pull an undeserved IP grab. Such a company would find it really hard to get self-motivated people after pulling a move like that. Because everyone has side projects. Although some are diligent about getting "my stuff versus your stuff" spelled out in contract, it's often a "gentleman's agreement"... As an aside, I wanted to point out that it's really common for security companies (or simply, "groups") to keep internal tools and only release them to the public when they've wrung all the "juice" out of them - e.g. publicity value exceeds the value of the results. I think this model is not too far off what was described originally.