> For me, as an "experimentalist" (read, data-analyst), I also maintain job attractiveness by having sets of code that no one else has. I'm experienced in a variety of pattern finding algorithms, and have even invented a few myself for very specific problems-- and within my little sphere, people know this about me, I'm the person people come to for certain things. > I spent years of my life perfecting these, learning about algorithms, learning the intricacies and quirks of the various datasets we use-- if someone wants to take my place in this community as "that guy" then I expect them to devote as much time as I have to learning these techniques inside out and then to do something better than me. > I have no desire to pass my code off to a masters student and let him naively plug some dataset into it-- firstly because no one should ever rely on a black box in this field, and secondly because these codes all need to be tweaked to account for the different instruments and data structures being used.

> Perhaps if my contract didn't have a built in expiration I would be willing to care-bear-share my fractal search methods and spend my Thursday afternoons showing you how to Savitsky-Golay smoothing works, but as long as I'm out of a job next July, and you're the guy applying for my job, you can keep your filthy hands off my code.

First, WOW. In can't imagine any sector (except indeed academia) where a "keep your filthy hands off my code" attitude like that is remotely acceptable.

Second question is, whose code, exactly? In most lines of work, if you write code for an employer (university in this case, I suppose), the copyright for that code is implicitly given to the employer. In this particular case, it means they could, as well as should force you to open this code. It could very well be that your contract explicitly states different, it has to be clear about code though, it's not just implied together with writings, for instance.

Imagine if you were to work for, say, a security analysis consultancy firm, and you write a lot of cool machine learning and analysis code to detect intrusions or leakage. Regardless of whether your contract expires, if you leave, you're not leaving with your code. And if you'd refuse to document it properly so that the next guy can't use it, expect the contract to expire prematurely.

I can imagine that would seem frustrating and scary NOW, but only because they made it seem like yours was a proper approach for all those years you gave it. Of course it wasn't--and deep down inside you know this to be true--if only everything had been open from the start.