This seems very much the case sadly ... a friend of mine is working as a software engineer at IBM (in Europe) and they indeed are not allowed to use their personal accounts to make open source contributions in their spare time. They would have to ask IBM legal to sign off on everything. Sad life.

Legal were so backlogged that approval for anything other than a strategic project was impossible.

I was not allowed to submit work to unapproved projects, other than my personal stuff I'd listed as my own IP on being hired.

It's usually about IP protection ahead of brand protection.

2870. (a) Any provision in an employment agreement which provides that an employee shall assign, or offer to assign, any of his or her rights in an invention to his or her employer shall not apply to an invention that the employee developed entirely on his or her own time without using the employer’s equipment, supplies, facilities, or trade secret information except for those inventions that either:

(1) Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of the invention to the employer’s business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development of the employer; or

(2) Result from any work performed by the employee for the employer.

(b) To the extent a provision in an employment agreement purports to require an employee to assign an invention otherwise excluded from being required to be assigned under subdivision (a), the provision is against the public policy of this state and is unenforceable.

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio....

i am curious what if any precedent exists here.

obligatory IANAL

The problem here is around intellectual property, not patents, no?

I wonder about this in 2021. Social media and ubiquitous recording has changed what seems like an obvious truth into something more complex. A company employee badmouthing customers? A police officer who posts something racist? Attending a political demonstration? An employee who's working on a competing product in their spare time?

I don't have answers to these, but somewhere, the line became blurry.

Yeah, I think it's mainly internet, specifically because:

* the things that you posted during your free time remain visible also during your work time;

* websites optimize for engagement and ad views, so if you happen to write something controversial, they will try to show it to as many people as possible;

* many websites require you to use your real name, making things easier to connect to your real-life identity and employers (also to match across websites);

* the "social networks" encourage you to discuss various unrelated topics on the same website under the same account, again making it easier to connect things together.

Compare it with our social life before internet:

* if you say something in a pub, your boss is not there;

* most of the things you say, people will quickly forget;

* if someone quotes you, you can deny it;

* a social norm against snitching (if someone reports on what you said among your friends to your boss, most likely the friends will shun that person).

Seems to me that most of these bad things are driven by advertising -- the same rules that make it easier for advertisers to connect all dots about your life, also make it easy for your boss, and for someone who wants to report on you to your boss. Also, seems to me that Google and Facebook are the major forces behind this trend -- most other websites either don't feel entitled to know and display my real name, or they are easy to ignore.

Very popular with employers, of course: You get to avoid the minor risk of them embarrassing you; you reduce their job market value by preventing them from having a portfolio or any public profile; you remove non-work distractions from their free time; and you get to vacuum up any IP they generate outside of work hours.

So naturally, employers want to normalise the idea.

I didn't take the statement as "we own all your time" so much as "you represent the company at all times".

I don't think the narrative is usually "you can't work on anything else"; it's that you can't claim to have two jobs.

>you reduce their job market value by preventing them from having a portfolio or any public profile

It's not clear to me that "[email protected]" vs "[email protected]" changes the equation on portfolio lookup by any significant degree.

>you get to vacuum up any IP they generate outside of work hours

This seems to me the only real significant part of the equation, and by far the dangerous one -- a benevolent company will generally not care if your side projects are unrelated to you main project, but ultimately the decision is entirely their's, leaving a gaping hole of largely unnecessary risk.

The justification however is really that it becomes murky really quickly -- your generated IP is usually in the same vein as what you do at work (you work at what you're good at, and you presumably need to be good at X to produce new IP in it). So it quickly becomes questionable how much of that IP was really just you pulling on resources/knowledge/equipment from your working environment.

In the case we're talking about, the employee was told they can't work on the kernel in their free time. Clearly not a second job.

> It's not clear to me that "[email protected]" vs "[email protected]" changes the equation on portfolio lookup by any significant degree.

In this case, they were told they couldn't work on the kernel even under their personal e-mail address - and to remove the credit for work they'd already done. Seems pretty clear-cut to me?

TFA only talks about working under gmail vs ibm email; it says nothing about not working on it period (perhaps by removal from maintainer’s file? But I read that as switch it with it the IBM email, since that’s all it talks about otherwise.)

When it's weekend, then you aren't stopping being employed by your company, aren't you?

edit.

is this whole thread some peak of HN? when you're leaving your Google office, then you aren't magically stopping being Googler.

Same way with universities - if you attend e.g Harvard and then do a lot of shit even outside the school, then you should expect to be kicked or punished at best.

You're more or less representing them.

Then they should pay 168 hours / week and not 40

> You're more or less representing them.

No you don't

You just basically rewrite what guy that I responded to wrote, nothing more.

You agreed to get $your_salary for X hours of work and being connected to that company.

If you worked in some industry like porn or at facebook, then somebody may use it against you and I don't think

saying "No I didn't work for them" is going to work for ya

>No you don't

Then why shitton of Googler and other people uses "opinions are mine"?

because they're Googlers even outside office hours

Maybe you're not representing them "directly", but you definitely do indirectly.

The hell means 'being Googler'? I'm not a Xer because I'm employed at X. Wake up.

a person who works at google. That's an official name for them, much like how college alumni may call each other their mascot. I wouldn't read too much into it.

"

2870 (a) Any provision in an employment agreement stating that an employee should assign any of his rights in an invention to his employer shall not apply to an invention which the employee develops totally on his time without using the employer's equipment, supplies, facilities, or trade secret information except for the inventions which:

2871 Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of the invention to the employer's business, or actual or anticipated research or development of the employer

2872 Result from any work done by the employee for the employer.

"

In the state of California clauses assigning _all_ IP to the employer in an employment contract are not legal, and hence unenforceable.

I don't know where this guy is based, but his IBM email address is @linux.ibm.com, so arguably his work on the Linux kernel may be conceived as "relating to the employer's business."

Delaware 19 Del.C. s 805

Illinois 765 I.L.C.S. 1060/2

Kansas K.S.A. 44-130

Minnesota M.S.A. 181.78

North Carolina G.S. s 66-57.1

Washington RCWA 49.44.140, 150

Utah UT ST s 34-39-1, 2, 3

IMO this is the gray area. Could IBM make a reasonable case that this kernel work is related to / close to / similar to what IBM is doing? Could they have learned something, even just a rejected -- but proprietary -- approach from an internal project... that kinda ends up on the kernel?

I agree with the consensus that IBM is in the wrong here... but lawyers might be able to prove otherwise.

Obviously that gets trickier if the company is like, Microsoft which at least has tried to make every kind of software imaginable. But most companies do pretty much one thing, and I am free to develop whatever else besides that on my own time. It seems reasonable.

Visualize Rent

In any case, these laws are hard to enforce unless you are working on company hardware. And people who really care may sign off existing projects to get around this.

Before you rail on how wrong this is for a company to do, please read this article by Joel on the subject.

This is a super difficult topic for corporations that most don't realize and the article below walks through those dynamics.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr...

The IBM employee is being forced to represent IBM under his official email alias regardless of whether the IBM employee acknowledges IBM owns his work product around the clock.