Marc Nieper-Wißkirchen wrote: > > "copyright" here means more "Nutzungsrecht" which you can transfer also > > in Germany. You still stay the "Urheber". > > If transferring the "Nutzungsrecht" is enough, everything should be fine.
You need to verify, though, that no employer of yours has a legal basis for claiming the "Nutzungsrechte" on the code that you want to contribute. If the code you write is not related to your job, that is, if you are not being paid to write it, then the "Nutzungsrechte" belong to you - regardless whether your employment contract says otherwise. This is guaranteed by Art. 2.(1) Grundgesetz. (*) Often it is clear whether something is related to your job. For example, if you have a manager that tells you what to develop. (*) If your employer is a university [1], things are less clear. In the past, some universities have been strict and claimed that the works of their professors and researchers belong to them. This has changed somewhat around 2000-2005: The slogan "public money - public code" has convinced at least some universities to allow the code that came out of research projects to be released under Open Source licenses. In any case, this topic is subject to negotiation between the professors/researchers and the university. (*) Disclaimer: I got this infos from a lawyer. But I am not a lawyer. Consult your own lawyer. Bruno [1] https://www.uni-augsburg.de/de/fakultaet/mntf/math/prof/alg/arbeitsgruppe/nieper-wisskirchen/
