RE: Experience vs Steeling

[John Posada <JPosada -at- book -dot- com>]

There are three components to a project; the forms and templates, the
content that goes in those forms and templates, and the knowledge you gain
by working on the project.

Some clients pay you to create content alone; some the templates and the
content. If they didn't pay you for it and it wasn't specified as a
deliverable for the project, feel free to use it.

If they paid you for the content only and you develop the template, then
unless the template represents a look-and-feel that is identified with the
client, they own the content only and you are free to recycle the template.

The knowledge is broken into two parts; proprietary knowledge and general
knowledge; how ABCD Inc's chip works and how chips, in general, work. Reuse
of proprietary is never cool. However, if you gained expertise in how chips
work, you are free to use that knowledge at the next gig. I might feel
uncomfortable if my knowledge of chips in general gave my existing company
an advantage over the previous company (though not unethical and it should
be leveraged for higher pay rate), but I've never had to deal with that
situation as in my case, no two gigs have been the same.  

John Posada
Senior Technical Writer
Barnes&Noble.com
jposada -at- book -dot- com
NY: 212-414-6656
Dayton: 732-438-3372
"There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream
of things that never were, and ask why not?"
-----Robert Francis Kennedy, 1968 presidential campaign

> On Mon, 12 May 2003 10:51:22 -0400, "Ashley Hoskins"
> <ahoskins -at- ase-usa -dot- net> wrote:
> 
> >When does it stop being a project that uses your previous 
> experience and
> >starts becoming a rip-off of a previous project?
> 
> Hi Ashley:
> 
> It starts being a rip-off when you use materials that are specific to
> the previous project, that is some method or technique that they use
> that no one else has ever used.

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