> Always talk to an actual lawyer if you have serious concerns about this stuff. :-) yeah, but lawyering-up isn't cheap either, so perhaps i can glean some gen

> Always talk to an actual lawyer if you have serious concerns about this stuff. :-) yeah, but lawyering-up isn't cheap either, so perhaps i can glean some general insight from hn :) :/ ? but let's say you're working somewhere that uses some technology... like, i dunno, you're working at google or somewhere with a really broad scope and you want to make some sort of open-source contributions to or write something about one of the many things they've got a finger on like, well, pretty much anything from clojure to thermostats... how's it going to play out if you try to fork that apache-licensed project or sell a compendium of writings somewhere down the line? i have worked at a multinational company before, but the scope of what they did was fairly limited in comparison to some of the larger companies, so i'd never heard of such -- apparently common -- agreements before. i'm guessing that most of companies wouldn't mind free-software-type contributions and these agreements amount to more of an nda than a, "we own all your programs while we're paying your salary," or is that naive?