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One thing you could consider trying, depending on your relationship(s) with the higher management at your existing employer: ask them for explicit permission to commercialize the open source project. Heck, you might even go as far as to ask them to invest in your project. You'd need to spend some time working out your case for why this is a "win win" for everybody involved; and all of this would depend a lot on how reasonable those people are (and how much you trust them) but in the ideal scenario this could possibly be the best situation of all. Short of that, I'd say "work on it *in private* on your own time, do *not* talk about it at all with any of your current co-workers, and then quit your existing job before actively starting to sell the product in the market". Best case, you quit, your existing employer forgets all about you and the project, and you never cross paths with them again. This would probably be easier if your new product isn't a directly competing project to whatever they do, and if you don't target their existing customer base. On that last point, I can't emphasize that enough: if you were to go out and target their existing customers (especially if, FSM forbid, you make the mistake of contacting people you are in contact with as part of your current job, or take any emails/phone numbers/etc. from your current job) that would probably draw their ire, and bring down legal wrath, faster than anything to do with the product itself. If you do this, try to focus on selling to a different set of customers if at all possible. |