Re: How do I approach this?

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>
> My primary interest in doing this was to use it as a tool to possibly gain
> employment 'in the industry'. Hence my request to have some sort of
> acknowledgement in my personnel file, or perhaps even a separate
> company-headed letter detailing the specifics and its benefits to the
> company.
>

The way that you tackle will all depend on:
- the size of the company that you work for
- the amount of time/effort that you've put into it.
- how secure you feel your negiotiating position is.
- how bespoke the application is.
- how many other IT people are then in your department / company

It sounds as though this is something that you initially started off as a
combination between something that you felt might be useful to you at work,
and a platform on which you could practice you VS.Net skills

Then, the app became more popular, and you continued to improve it and it
became more popular at work.

Then, finally, when your company realised how useful the tool was, and that
they didn't own it, they then started to request/demand that you give it to
them for free.

Their concern is probably that you may end up leaving the company, withdraw
permission for them to use your application, and then they'll be stuck.

See if you can negotiate some sort of situation in which you still retain
sole ownership, some recognition of your work (preferably financial) - and
as an ongoing situation, you'll be asked to provide ongoing development
(maybe for some extra financial benefit.

Bear in mind that you don't really want to end up being persuaded to do work
on it within the company's premises or work hours, since the cmopany be able
to claim that you are doing the development as part of your job, allowing
them to claim part-ownership.

S.


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