The article isn't 100% clear on this, but I got the impression this was the upstream driver for an IBM product (VNIC) that the guy worked on as part of his job, but listed his gmail address in the maintainers file... In which case, fair enough.

My current kernel sources have:

   IBM Power SRIOV Virtual NIC Device Driver
   M:      Dany Madden <[email protected]>
   M:      Lijun Pan <[email protected]>
   M:      Sukadev Bhattiprolu <[email protected]>
   L:      [email protected]
   S:      Supported
   F:      drivers/net/ethernet/ibm/ibmvnic.*

And so it looks like Lijun was asked to remove himself from the project (perhaps because he was reassigned at work or who knows why) and instead put himself with a gmail account, and then that was noticed and 'nice tried'.

Hmm, that might be valid. Maybe he should ask to have it prioritized at work to contribute officially to avoid any corporate PHB conflicts?

If they work on it as part of their job, then sure (although I find the tone of the email very unprofessional). But it would have made more sense to update the file with a linux.ibm.com address like the other maintainers, rather than delete it.

In Spain your employee must pay for “after business hours” exclusivity in the monthly payroll. It must clearly state that every month the company pays for the exclusivity. It’s not enough with a contract saying you cannot work after your business hours, they must pay for it and they must proof they are paying it in the monthly payroll.

Not sure in other countries, but probably in Western Europe and 100% sure in Spain even large corporations know it’s really hard to enforce contractual and post-contractual exclusivity, unless the employee breaks some IP of the employer.

Still, it is always a good idea to tell your new employer that you are “moonlighting”.

Russia is even stricter: to transfer the IP from the employee to the company the company must first give the employee that specific task in writing. Even if you write something on company time and using company tools it's still yours, the company can just fire you for misusing their resources.

That honestly makes sense. A contract with no "consideration" is generally not enforceable in English common law, for instance.

Every professional job I've had here in the UK (admittedly we are little America...) required me to sign away all IP rights.

I don't see how that is enforceable except in circumstances where the creative content of your work is in some way related to what the company is involved in (which can be expensive for a large for a multinational corp., admittedly)

For example, the photographs of your family taken by yourself. Would you expect your employer to retain copyright?

They have a legal department and you don’t though right, so if they chose to fight it you’ll probably decide it’s not worth it.

As I said, mine too, that does not mean it is in any way legal (and as most of my coworkers have FOSS projects of their own, I would like to see them try).

I believe the use of a contract and signatures in fact does literally make it legal, since that is the point of a contract. Everything depends on what you signed.

A contract cannot override law. A prime example is the minimum wage laws - it is illegal for an employer to pay less than the minimum wage, and an employee can't sign a contract to make it actually alright after all.

There are laws, and there are judgements which are the courts interpretation of the laws; a signed contract does not have the power to overturn either.

It is the job of HR & Legal depts to make sure a contract is legally viable, not mine, and I happen to know my rights. There are at least 5 illegal clauses in my contract, and I am certainly keeping them close by if I need to go to court against them one day.

You could sign yourself into slavery, that doesn't make it legal.