Show HN: Open Source Policy for employees in a proprietary software company | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Open Source Policy for employees in a proprietary software company

github.com

2 pointsdamian-h3 comments

I'm submitting this because of some of the comments "The Impact Github is Having on Your Software Career" submission mention the fact that IP clauses in contracts prevent people from contribution to oss i.e. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13706091

I feel that it is unhealthy that the majority of organisations (appear to) have such clauses yet at same time often they wouldn't be in existence if it were not for the OSS they build their products and services on.

I built this policy for my org and blogged about it here http://dhickey.ie/2014/11/our-open-source-policy-at-evision/ . I feel is strikes a balance between the business concerns and contributing to a healthy ecosystem. I would like to see more organizations take a similar approach; your feedback appreciated :)

Your policy doesn't make any distinction between open source licenses that do grab any and all patent rights in scope; and those that don't. If your firm has no patent IP and doesn't plan to get any, fine and dandy. That's not the usual case for large firms, and you can't let every employee make legal judgments on behalf of the whole firm, that might severely affect the firm. Hence a firm rule. Fortunately, licenses which appropriate patent rights as punishment for daring to contribute are getting rarer.

Note - these clauses also seize relevant hardware patents, they make no distinction between hardware and software patents. Will a court say otherwise? Pardon me if I don't bet my company on that question.

Discouraging work for anyone else at all can have other motives of course. Businesses often want legal rights to all inventions an employee may come up with during employment even if unrelated to their business in any way, for example.

> If your firm has no patent IP and doesn't plan to get any, fine and dandy.

This is currently the case. We are also Europe based. However, good point and I will re-examine the schedule of permitted licences. We are also not involved in hardware.

> Discouraging work for anyone else...

I understand this, and we're not encouraging work for anyone else, instead encouraging contributions to the foundations that made it possible to be in business in the first place. We also mention "does not compete with eVision’s business." which may be interpreted broadly.

Good feedback, thx.

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