A developer recently posted a request for help in the "Legal" section of the StackExchange Q&A community , asking whether he would be held responsible "if he deleted the software he wrote when he resigned from the company."
According to the developer's statement, he now lives in the United States, is a freelancer, and does not have an employment contract. But when he was younger, he worked in a warehouse as an hourly employee doing inventory-related work. At that time, in order to make his job easier, he wrote a software that could automate a large number of manual operations. Later, others in his position also began to use this software to improve work efficiency.
But as a software author, his contribution was basically free of charge, and the company never gave him any actual returns or rewards. To this day, he no longer expects any compensation; but he has an idea: "If I delete my code when I leave my job, will I be held responsible?"
This post caused a heated discussion in the forum. One of the highly praised answers analyzed the problem and gave the following suggestions in a concise and comprehensive manner:
If you wrote the software during working hours (9 to 5) and got paid for it, then the company owns the software. Even if they don't know you wrote it. Therefore, removal of the software constitutes damage to company property.
If the software was written in your spare time, it's a bit trickier legally. The nature of your job will vary. If you don't get any benefit from it, my advice is to ditch the software. Destroying it will only get you into trouble.
See the original post for more details .