I recently learned from a github discussion that if you work for Amazon, Google etc. you are also not allowed to work on any open source projects, even on your free time without their permission.
However the company does not claim copyright or patents on work-unrelated ideas and (closed-source) projects.
Do you get fired, or do they claim ownership?
I doubt that would happen in practice though, unless you were creating an open source competitor to something they do or somesuch.
Having to worry about it is horrible enough, since this will actually keep many developers from pursuing their passions in their free time.
I would never agree to this. Generally, if you work at a place that commonly throws around the phrase "<X> is in breach of contract which is grounds for termination.", you're in a bad job that will not ever teach you anything or advance your career. You are working as a glorified contractor and should learn some warning flags to avoid the terrible corporate bus stops.
And HN comment thread thereon: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13142327
The situation is quite simple:
- pre-existing work I contributed to this project remains under my copyright
- contributions other people make to this project remain under their own copyrights
- contributions I make to this project subsequent to November 2010 are under Google copyright
- nobody should really give a shit about this because a) I freely agreed to this even though Google has a process where I could have asked to retain my own copyright because b) the code is BSD licensed and you can use it however you like regardless of who owns the copyright.
When it comes to Amazon, you have employees sending patches upstream anonymously because the company culture is against contributing anything back to the open source community.
[0] 'Moreover, some states, including California and Illinois, have laws that limit the effectiveness of assignment-of-inventions agreements where the invention was created outside the inventor's employment with the company.' -- http://www.masudafunai.com/showarticle.aspx?Show=5942
edit: I see - I initially misread parent. Yes, some Googlers are work-for-hire.