>I'm writing with a somewhat specific question. I'm a non-developing
>employee of a Missouri software company. In my spare time, I do
>develop,
>though, and am about to release a program of substantial size as free
>software. I'm concerned about my employer's finding out about this and
>using it to gain "ownership" over the program, seeing as how I wrote it
>while under their employ. Is there anything I can do to retain my
>copyright so that I can release it as free software, or does my
>employer
>have legal claim over my program?
>
You need help from software freedom conservancy. The lawyers. I just listened to their podcast: 'free as in freedom' refering to the contract you sign on joining mentioned in other responses.
Free as in Freedom: 0x5E: Conservancy's ContractPatch Initiative
http://faif.us/cast/2016/nov/01/0x5E/
There are links there to the audio oggcast and to the blog posts which might be worth a read.
https://sfconservancy.org/blog/?tag=ContractPatch
It might be worth joining their mailing list as well.
Good luck.
-- --
Andres (he/him/his)
Ham United Group
Richmond Makerlabs