So its "mother may I?" for the 'privilege' of working for such a shit company?
For a company to claim ownership of everything I do when not working is called indentured servitude or slavery.
So its "mother may I?" for the 'privilege' of working for such a shit company?
For a company to claim ownership of everything I do when not working is called indentured servitude or slavery.
The limits you can work with are: working on your own equipment, non-working hours, working on it at home in an area not typically used for $dayjob, the subject of the work, and above all else your locality. These agreements are generally overreaches by the lawyers drafting them, depending on the nature of the job. Remember: no contract can limit rights granted to you under the law, every contract has limits, and you cannot be prevented from working, even if stated otherwise.
Washington, for instance, has state laws against this kind of IP assignment.
IANAL, so don't read into this too much, but I have consulted IP attorneys about this. If you're doing something like this, definitely consult -- the kind of work you do does matter. In this guy's case, it seems he does have a conflict of interest w.r.t. the work he does for IBM.
I get paid well, and have never had a problem -- or seen others have problems -- open sourcing things where it made sense; including things that I worked on at work during work hours such as abandoned/cancelled projects or things that made sense for the community to have access to.
EDIT: also your tone sucks, this is HN not reddit.