MojRacun

So basically you're a bond villain personified but unwilling to put a name to all that casual and random cruelty.

I'm actually a happy IBMer (unpopular opinion here I'm sure:), and happen to have a great long term relationship with my management chain, so I inform them of everything, both in a friendly and official capacity. Makes everything easy. I even told my boss when I had a completely unrelated side business (music at parties) etc.

When it comes to open source contributions, both business conduct guidelines and open source mandatory yearly certs are unambiguous about transparency and approval of open source contributions. So it's pretty mandatory I think to inform, and limited if any impetus not to open open about it.

Working for a big corporation is a bit cyberpunky/Snowcrashy in that way I suppose.

We don't know the full story here.

IBM allows open source work. But there are rules, particularly about transparency. Just consider the sco lawsuit that won't die, and you may get an inkling why. This person appears to be in the open source / linux part of ibm. IBMers all must accept open source contribution guidelines. It sounds like this person simply didn't fully follow. Managers response may have been heavy handed but again none of us here knows details unless somebody provides them.

I notice there's four other ibm addresses so there is a story there.

Disclaimer and disclosure - IBMer who contributed openly and with management awareness and never got this kind of stern instruction :-/