The law is much more favorable to employees, and the legal definition of conflict of interest is more narrow than the company would like you to believe.

Oh, I'm sure it is. The problem is that they could sue me anyways.

That can happen any time anyway. But they would have to show damages. And even though you'd be on the hook for legal fees - at least initially, defending such a simple civil suit isn't that big of a deal financially.

Or ... just do open source under an alias.

Agreed, they're trying to scare folks.

When I looked into something similar I found that while companies will fight tooth and nail to not sign away rights to a specific idea/effort, the law is very much on the employee's side as long as you don't use corporate equipment to do it.

Agreed, they'hen I looked into something similar I found that while companies will fight tooth and nail to not sign away rights to a specific idea/effort, the law is very much on the employee's side as long as you don't use corporate equipment to do it.

There are three issues here intermingled.

1) Competing with your current company while moonlighting.

2) Leaving your current company and using any knowledge you gained there against them.

3) Leaving your current company and using your skill set at an unrelated company.

Contracts forbidding 1 & 2 are usually defensible both morally and legally. It’s 3 where the metaphorical water gets murky, since overly broad contracts of this type basically deny workers the ability to work and earn money for the duration of the noncompete, if enforced.