system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Should I give away my software to my company for free?

I’ve been working at my current manufacturing company now for 4 years (non-tech). For size, the company employs around 400 people and makes about $50m/y ($5m/y net). They’re an old company who haven’t invested that much in technology. I noticed over the past few years how much the company was needing both a project management tool and an asset management tool. Information is spread by word of mouth and a lot of work is still paper-based which is then manually entered to a computer. I tried to get them to buy some of these softwares a while back, but they were reluctant to pay ~$15 per license per month, even though they admitted it would greatly improve their operation.

Over the last 18 months, I brushed up on some of my coding knowledge and made a software that combined a project management software with an asset management software, tailored to the company. I pitched this last week and the executives were blown away by it. 

They asked at the end of the meeting quite cheerfully how quickly could I get this implemented. I told them not long, however we’d need to negotiate a price, either as an ongoing fee with support, or a fixed price with no support, or an agreed price per hour for any future updates and maintenance. They were horrified. One of the executives said it was rude of me to ask for money for a software that was tailored towards them. None of the work was done while I was on shift. All of the work has been done at home during my own time. He said he didn’t care and it was my job to come up with new ideas that benefited the company. I said that if it’s as useful to the company that he said 10 minutes ago that it was, then he shouldn’t mind paying for it. I left it there and I’ve had little communication with them since. Am I being unreasonable here?
gpt
Absolutely not. If implementing this piece of software was part of your job, then they would be right to expect it, but it sounds like that’s not the case. This is your intellectual property and you have every right to protect it and get paid for it.