I'm sorry to bother you, I looked roughly into some articles on .fsf.org
pages and a few other places, and couldn't find what I needed; I don't
know who to contact, so I make this half-blind shot in hope to get
some help.
A few years ago I moved to Sweden and started work in a private company.
Later did I only bitterly learn, that according to the Swedish law an
employed programmer is still considered an employee out of work time,
and his company can claim copyright on out-of-job creations; an attempt
to renegotiate this issue with my employer did not change my situation.
This reason only has kept me from code donations to free software, which I
enjoyed for a few projects before I got employed (I did some debugging and
bug reports though). I decided to change this situation by changing my
employer as soon as possible, which happens to be about now. I'm seeking
programming freedom for *myself*, not just to write free software,
but I put "writing free software" as my goal, which I hope will fulfill
what I want, and which is by itself sine qua non condition of what I'm
aiming at. I want to demand from my new employer a special arrangement
which would differentiate between "work for hire" and "hobby creations".
When time for face to face negotiation comes I would like to know what
exact conditions to put forward, and what to avoid, so that I don't have
to get another bitter lesson again.
I'm looking for some (casual) legal advice, specific to Sweden. I will
be very grateful if you could direct me to some resources, articles,
discussion groups or persons, where I could get some instruction on
above and other issues.
Truly Yours,
Irek Tobijaszewski