[walshemj]

Which in the UK would belong to your employer in most cases any major piece of work is 95% likely to have been done at work.

You need to talk to a HR professional and understand how the master and servants act (as amended ) apply and who owns what.

Startups could be opening up them selves to legal attack by competitors if they are found to be looking at a competitors code.

[Peroni]

I'm starting to wonder if you're actually being serious.

The vast majority of employers (at least the better ones) like to review developers github/bitbucket repo's in advance. Everything in there is open-source.

Your master and servants act has literally zero relevance to my point.

[walshemj]

Yes I am being deadly serious In the UK if its at all related to your work - your employer owns your work if its at all "related" even if you do it outside work on your own equipment.

This is direct from a very senior hr/ir Guy (our GC at the time) when we where discussing the implications of this for a colleague who had come up with some advanced algos for improving big iron systems - IBM used to get him in to consult for them as he was a Mainframe rockstar

And you don't know much about UK and US employment laws as most of it descends from the original M&S act as both countrys share the same roots for their legal systems.