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Comment by prima-facie | Hacker News Reader

This shows the shitty policy that most companies have. They use open source internally and give nothing back.

Yeah, I have been working for Rails shop that did exactly this.

I wasn't able to do anything, not even in my spare time, to contribute to open-source projects or do other work. The other work I can understand, because I could help a competitor for an example.

But that they owned ownership for every line of code written by me, even on my time off, was killing my inspiration.

One solution to this problem that I found is to be a freelancer instead of an employee. It also tends to work well in terms of "Hey, the surf is good, I won't be working today. Kthxbai"

Somehow, as if by magic, as soon as you become a freelancer people stop caring about butt-in-seat time and start caring about results. Same goes for IP, I have never had a client complain about opensourcing something I made on their buck.

>But that they owned ownership for every line of code written by me, even on my time off, was killing my inspiration.

Where were you working? That's definitely not how US ip-law operates.

Working in Denmark. I took it up with my Union, and they said that I couldn't do anything about it.

The rule initially was made to own rights to images and articles from photographers and journalists, so they couldn't sell to third parties, but was extended to also include code.

We do have a similar rule (with similar origins), but it has to be contractually asserted, and it would only apply to portions of code integrated into a larger 'visual work' - mostly it doesn't come into play outside of contracting.

That is OFTEN how US employment contracts work though... Perhaps not in CA, but the rest of the US...

Every employment contract I've been asked to sign has had some level of owning stuff I do off-hours (up to everything you do any time on your own computers, everything you've done in the past, etc...).

I've always pushed back and gotten it changed to meet my needs.

It's how they're written, but not how they work. In reality, that type of claim is not enforceable.

It is a good signal that they will attempt to prove infringement on your outside work though, and you can't ever guarantee a win in that kind of court case; the case-law is too messy and depends heavily on unproveables like 'intent' and 'reasonability'.

Same here, I've gotten it stipulated that only things related to the business were to be their property. Nobody's complained.

Yes, yes it can. It all depends on the contract you sign. At present, it seems as if most tech shops allow you to moonlight on your own boxes. But I've looked over company policies which were "we own your brainz". HP circa 2006 was one of those, iirc.

>Yes, yes it can

No, it literally can't. It can be somewhat similar with contracts that promise a transfer of IP, but you'd get sued for breach of contract, not for copyright infringement.

That doesn't stop companies from putting draconian claims in their contracts and manuals, and it doesn't stop them from trying to prove infringement anyway (no copyright case ever is a 'sure thing'), which is enough to scare most employees into toeing the line. But they can't actually make unrelated work you do on your own time automatically 'work for hire'.

Here's a solid discussion of that topic: http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf

The pivotal words are "within the scope of his or her employment" - these words can get a little fuzzy, but http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-scope-of-employment.htm is a reasonable (though not authoritative) discussion of the topic.

I've encountered this clause in a few employment contracts. It seems to be becoming standard language, but you don't have to agree to it. A contract's a starting point for negotiation, not something set in stone. If you don't want your side projects owned by the company, then ask for the clause to be removed/amended.

One place said they couldn't amend the contract, but wrote that they had no interest in code I wrote outside of work. A lawyer friend said that was close enough to be a contract amendment and I needed the job, so I signed. Another place happily amended it so they only owned what I made on company time with company resources. Problem solved in an amicable way.

> A contract's a starting point for negotiation, not something set in stone. If you don't want your side projects owned by the company, then ask for the clause to be removed/amended.

The problem was also that we had two legal documents, the contract, and the "house"-rules. The contract just stated that "The contract refers and includes the house-rules".

It would require a lot of rework for them to rewrite my contract so only the part about ownership of code was amended, but all the other house-rules still applied.

It was my first job after finishing school, and the place was nice, and I figured it wouldn't be a problem, but I was wrong, and it kept irritating me.

This has been pretty typical of my experience, I get a contract that says, basically, they own all things I create during the course of my employment. I offer changes to the subsection, that indicate they own only those things which I create specifically related to the problem spaces+ the company works in, with specific exclusions around any existing creations I have. Usually, in the contracts I've been offered, there has been a specific schedule to fill out for pre-existing invention disclosures.

Not once has any company refused such a change.

+ Worded appropriately, of course.

Yeah, many places will offer you exclusions on pre-existing work and offer you the ability to add to the list of excluded works later on. As long as you're not working on anything that's competitive they're usually fine with it. I won't take a job that won't allow me to keep working on my own projects.

Is this even legal ? In Switzerland, I don't think an employer can claim ownership of a piece of work that was produced on the employee spare time (and on his own computer and so on).

By my understanding it certainly isn't legally enforceable in the UK. It isn't actually illegal to have such a clause in the contract, but if it were to come to court it would be thrown out as an unreasonable clause.

The problem from the employee's point of view though is that it may have to come to court before the employer will back down and there are costs in terms of money, time, and relationships associated with that especially if the company goes for the appeal cycle afterwards. Most individuals can't afford the time or cost of such a case (though costs are likely to be recovered from the company eventually, you need to find the funds up front) if it comes to that, and the software industry can be fairly judgemental and nepotistic so it'll be hard work getting a new job (once life becomes unpleasant at the old one due to the court case) now you have a reputation for being difficult. These considerations are why individuals back down quickly, as the assume the conversation will go:

    Company:    We own that.
    Individual: No you don't.
    Company:    Contract says so.
    Individual: You can't enforce that.
    Company:    We can try. Wanna fight?
    Individual: Er, no. Here, take it.

Companies know the clause is not legally enforceable, but they have it in there because they know it generally doesn't have to be as most people will not argue as far as the legal status of the clause being relevant (in fact most people don't even know that it isn't legally enforceable). This is particularly the case for younger people or those otherwise near the start of their career.

Most non-compete clauses are in a similar legal position.

In Australia, I worked for a company that had what amounted to a "we own all your brainz" clause in their contract. I queried it, and they modified it: they owned anything I produced using their hardware, during paid time (excluding lunch breaks) or using knowledge I'd gained directly from working for them. Everything else, even stuff I did in the lunchroom using my laptop, was mine. The boss's son apparently agreed with me that the original clause was silly and may have been instrumental in getting his Dad to change it; or maybe the boss was just a reasonable guy. Actually, I think the latter is true. They were a good mob, and I was sad to leave.

> or using knowledge I'd gained directly from working for them

I wouldn't be comfortable with that. If you have gained knowledge on Redis, you should be able to use Redis in a personal project. It would be different if you had developed a super secret ranking algorithm that you later re-implemented in another project.

They made it clear (I don't recall the wording) that knowledge I gained for myself while working -- from co-workers, from research done as a necessary part of solving problems, etc -- wasn't the issue; it was specifically knowledge about the business and the topic it covers, which was related to the medical field, rather than knowledge of computer-specific issues. So: software projects relying on my knowledge of XSLT gleaned from working there: fine, not a problem; software projects to prescribe warfarin safely: not so fine. This was a good balance, and I had no trouble with it.

I have never worked for a company that gave anything back to the open source community.

Newspapers, commercial kitchens, design studios. All of them used open source software like PHP, jQuery, etc.

I developed a lot of jQuery plugins that will never see the light of day.

They are not required to give back. If you find that wrong, there are licenses you can use to enforce that. The licensing of code is your chance to say what you expect. Expecting them to do more is a "shitty policy." You can hope. But being angry that you failed to sell the value of contributing back to your particular project is silly.

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