| > Is this my intellectual property legally? It's a gray area, but because the inspiration and much preliminary information came from your employment, it's one that favors your employer and all the other programmers who contributed to OSTicket under the GPL licensing rules. If I were you, I would simply ask your employer if he minds that you release it under the GPL, under your own name. And why do I suggest GPL? Because OS Ticket is open-source and GPL (Version 2), and anything you derive from it must therefore also be open-source and GPL. > I believe it is my property ... Yes, and the property of everyone who ever wrote a line of code for OSTicket, all of whom deserve recognition and acknowledgment. > I want to just prevent them from further use once I do leave. What? OSTicket is open-source, which means your contributions are also open-source, which means you cannot prevent others from using your contributed code in any way they please. Welcome to the world of open source, where people try to cooperate with each other. |
To be fair, this really only applies to GPL licensed stuff and similar licenses. For example, if it's MIT licensed, I don't have to release any derivative works.