[HN Gopher] Apple engineer in need of OSS maintainers
___________________________________________________________________
Apple engineer in need of OSS maintainers
Author : Austin_Conlon
Score : 124 points
Date : 2020-04-21 14:33 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| [deleted]
| akling wrote:
| This subject makes me sad. I've recently heard from a bunch of
| Apple employees who had asked for permission to contribute to my
| open source project and got denied.
|
| Having worked there in the past myself, it's really weird to
| think back on how normal it seemed (to me) to allow an employer
| to put such extreme restrictions on my personal time.
|
| I hope they change their attitude about this some day.
| wayneftw wrote:
| Given that Apple would be the primary beneficiary of a strong
| Swift ecosystem and seeing how they treat developers on their
| platform - maybe they should rethink their stance or at least
| bring all employee projects in-house.
|
| Are there many developers out there that only program for Apple
| platforms?
|
| I suppose if you want to be one of those developers or if you
| want to work for Apple, it might be not be a bad idea to
| contribute.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Here's a possible solution. Do it anyway, knowing that if your
| company really wants to piss you off by making an issue out of
| it, you can (and will) tell them to piss off and quit. No job is
| worth sacrificing your personal life and freedom for.
|
| When they make a problem, and you quit, if you've got someone in
| the company that values your contribution enough to fight for you
| and find a compromise to get your OSS contributions back-approved
| or whatever, great. The employer will benefit from the loyalty
| you will feel towards the person who solved the problem ("the
| greatest boss evar"). If your boss can't make the problem
| disappear, then you quit. If you've organised your life
| correctly, you can afford a few months of job search, and your
| OSS contributions are a testament to the quality of your work.
|
| (Not saying that I ever did this. And you should probably not
| cross-reference "git log" with my CV either.)
| antoncohen wrote:
| California Labor Code section 2870[1] states:
|
| > (a) Any provision in an employment agreement which provides
| that an employee shall assign, or offer to assign, any of his or
| her rights in an invention to his or her employer shall not apply
| to an invention that the employee developed entirely on his or
| her own time without using the employer's equipment, supplies,
| facilities, or trade secret information except for those
| inventions that either:
|
| > (1) Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice
| of the invention to the employer's business, or actual or
| demonstrably anticipated research or development of the employer;
| or
|
| > (2) Result from any work performed by the employee for the
| employer.
|
| > (b) To the extent a provision in an employment agreement
| purports to require an employee to assign an invention otherwise
| excluded from being required to be assigned under subdivision
| (a), the provision is against the public policy of this state and
| is unenforceable.
|
| Large companies like Apple and Google get away with broad rules
| that effectively ban unapproved open source contributions because
| nearly every type of software can be said to "Relate at the time
| of conception or reduction to practice of the invention to the
| employer's business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated
| research or development of the employer".
|
| If you work at a small company in California, I suggest pushing
| back on any rules like that. At my current company the employment
| contract they initially sent me required me to notify them in
| writing every time I created any work I felt was protected by
| section 2870 (any personal open source, any music, any writing,
| anything that could have a copyright). I had that paragraph
| removed from the contract. The burden should be on the company to
| enforce their copyright ownership, and provide evidence of
| ownership, the burden shouldn't be on me.
|
| [1]
| https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Worth noting that this law is probably one of the driving
| factors behind the growth of the tech sector in California
| compared to other states. We're free to dream our dreams and
| seek funding later, not the other way around.
| aeonflux wrote:
| Non of his projects have any activity during last year. Yet this
| announcement is formed in quite an aggressive and quite frankly
| unnecessary way. In few days we might get another post here which
| will blame Apple for firing him.
| umvi wrote:
| > Apple doesn't let employees contribute to unapproved OSS
| projects (even in their personal time).
|
| Wow, that seems petty. And it enrages me enough that if I worked
| for Apple I'd immediately start looking elsewhere for a job. I
| can do whatever I darn well please in my personal time and any
| employer that says otherwise is being overbearing.
| Igelau wrote:
| > if I worked for Apple I'd immediately start looking elsewhere
| for a job
|
| Ooh that's a good one. I nearly snarfed my Pepsi.
| taywrobel wrote:
| That's a major part of why I left Apple for GitHub. Their OSS
| culture is horrible there.
|
| The only OSS projects that get approved to contribute to are
| ones where they've already hired most of the people that work
| on it. Cassandra, Mesos, and some other infra stuff come to
| mine. And occasionally they just buy a whole OSS company for
| their own use (FoundationDB).
|
| Submitting a patch to a small library you use? A multi-month
| process to be told no in the end 90% of the time or more. Have
| your own OSS projects? Not any more you don't.
|
| In my exit interview I made my reasoning clear, and pointed out
| that as they move more into services and away from pure
| hardware as revenue, it's going to be a bigger issue. Whether
| they agree or will work to fix it, only time will tell.
| cameronbrown wrote:
| Genuine question, what's the value of providing feedback in
| an exit interview. At best you get nothing from it, and at
| worst you get put on some secret hiring blacklist.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Especially since, under California law, what you do with your
| personal time on personal hardware is yours, regardless of
| employment contract.
| senderista wrote:
| It was the same at Amazon when I was there. You couldn't even
| work on your own game on your own time.
| falcolas wrote:
| Being the status quo for technical companies doesn't make it
| legal, moral, or fair.
| aeonflux wrote:
| But why is this not legal, moral or fair?
| falcolas wrote:
| Because it creates an unreasonable restriction on your
| life outside of work. Its somewhat unprecedented in the
| global market as well.
|
| Proofreaders are not prohibited from reading books.
|
| Concept Artists are not prohibited from creating art.
|
| Writers are not prohibited from writing.
|
| Teachers from teaching.
|
| Workers from volunteering work.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Most big animation studios have contracts that say "we
| own everything you draw while you work for us". Or at
| least they did when I was in the industry around the turn
| of the century.
| jariel wrote:
| It's definitely not an unreasonable restriction for most,
| and those who don't like the policy don't have to work
| there.
|
| Your examples aren't helpful because the don't address
| the issue, which is risk.
|
| In the examples provided there's really nothing about the
| 'personal work' that puts the employers position at risk.
| Which is why, by the way, schools don't generally defy
| teachers from teaching on the side. Or proofreaders etc..
|
| In fact such limitations are rare outside industries with
| IP issues.
|
| Apple is a $1T company and all of that valuation is up
| for grabs by litigious people of various kinds who can
| use any kind of side-show tactic interpretation of the
| law to make money.
|
| So imagine someone 'working from home' on the 'same
| computer' that they use for work. What counts as 'work
| time' vs. 'personal time' when flipping back and forth
| between activities?
|
| How will a judge view this?
|
| Then you have competitive problems: you work on 'iMovie'
| for 1 hour, then you work on 'MyMovie' (personal) the
| hour. This creates ugly conflicts of interest.
|
| Then you have liability issues if Apple is seen to be
| contributing to an OSS without the right legal bits in
| place. It doesn't matter that it 'shouldn't' be a
| problem, what matters is that a bad actor + a lawyer can
| possibly make enough of a fuss to convince a judge that
| there's a problem 'Apple's contribution to this OSS code
| materially affected my business and it was no clear in
| the liscencing' etc..
|
| As we've seen with Google/Uber, this stuff is very
| expensive, very strategic, can be very ambiguous, which
| is bad.
|
| There's so much grey in the equation, and so much at
| risk, it's simply not worth it for Apple and Amazon.
|
| So if you want to work there, that's it, you can't make
| games.
|
| It'd be nice if there were some kind of regulatory issues
| around it, but it'd have to be clear.
|
| I also think they should be nice enough to 'wave'
| people's rights to do certain things, like work on
| specific OSS projects.
| aeonflux wrote:
| As I pointed in other comment - restrictions on life
| outside work are common and reasonable. Most people can't
| work competitors after work.
| ac29 wrote:
| > Most people can't work competitors after work.
|
| Non-compete clauses "are automatically void as a matter
| of law in California" [0], where Apple is based (though
| they have offices in other states and countries). I
| wonder if a ban on open source contributions would fall
| afoul of this law (I suspect yes, though Apple can afford
| pretty good lawyers).
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-
| compete_clause#California
| BossingAround wrote:
| How is that fair? Apple pays me for 8h a day, why can't I
| work another 4h a day for Google if I choose to do so?
|
| Now, disclosing secrets, that's a different matter. If I
| go to Google to inform them of amazing killer project
| Apple wants to do within 5 years, that's called corporate
| espionage.
|
| No reason why I couldn't work for multiple companies
| though. In fact, I don't even see a reason why I should
| even tell these companies I work for multiple companies.
| umvi wrote:
| > Apple pays me for 8h a day, why can't I work another 4h
| a day for Google if I choose to do so?
|
| You can, if you are being paid by the hour. But you
| probably aren't being paid by the hour, you are probably
| collecting an annual salary which means you might be
| expected to work 8-10 hours per day, not work for other
| companies, and other restrictions.
| BossingAround wrote:
| Even though my contract states yearly salary, that salary
| is calculated by $hourly_rate * 8 *
| $number_of_work_days_in_year. That's specifically stated.
|
| My contract also specifically states that I agree to work
| 40 hours a week.
|
| Maybe this is not the case in a typical US employment
| contract?
| grumple wrote:
| US contracts usually don't explicitly list policies like
| this. From my perspective, this means they can't hold you
| to anything, although the average person seems to think
| it means the company can do whatever they want. Either
| way, I'm pretty clear about my relationship with my
| employer - if you start asking me to do things, and I
| don't want to do them, I won't. They can decide if they
| want to live with that arrangement or not.
|
| Some of us outside CA do sign non-compete agreements,
| though, which is another matter entirely.
| jfim wrote:
| > No reason why I couldn't work for multiple companies
| though.
|
| Many the employment contracts have a "no moonlighting"
| clause, which basically says that one won't be working
| for another employer during the employment period.
| nostrademons wrote:
| > Apple pays me for 8h a day, why can't I work another 4h
| a day for Google if I choose to do so?
|
| I've heard of someone that did this. Held two full-time
| jobs at different software companies. It wasn't Apple and
| Google, IIRC it was something like Oracle and Nvidia or
| Oracle and Salesforce.
|
| He was fired from both when they found out and presumably
| blacklisted from being rehired, but other than that there
| weren't repercussions. It's not worth it to sue an
| individual engineer, and for many of the clauses in your
| employment agreement, their remedy is limited to firing
| you. He did it for a few years, too, and banked up a
| bunch of money doing so.
|
| One thing that surprises a lot of people who were raised
| to follow the rules: you have a lot of freedom if you're
| willing to deal with the consequences. Some people are
| afraid to question their boss because they're worried
| about losing their job; others will steal all of their
| employers' self-driving car plans for $680M, risking
| $180M in fines and possible jail time in the process. You
| get to decide where on the risk/reward continuum you want
| to sit.
| patcon wrote:
| It seems odd to consider "the commons" as a competitor...
| feels petty, like: "If we can't have it, then you can't
| even gift it to the human collective."
| Twirrim wrote:
| It changed a bunch when I was there (2013-2016). You were
| allowed to when I joined, but you had to get permission and
| the process was a complete pain in the arse and took forever
| to navigate. By the time I left, you still had to get
| permission but the process was extremely quick and simple, as
| long as it wasn't on competing technology.
|
| The one hard exception was game dev which remained a firm no-
| go, for reasons that never really made sense (Claim at the
| time was because Amazon had its own game studio?!)
| mabbo wrote:
| I'm still here. The process now is "don't ask, just read
| the policy and follow it in however you interpret it, but
| we'll sue you later if we disagree with your
| interpretation".
| vkou wrote:
| That's how Amazon handles non-competes as well. Are they
| going to enforce your non-compete? Who knows, just sign
| on the dotted line, and don't ask any questions.
| nefitty wrote:
| I heard this from a Tim Ferriss guest, forgot who, but he
| said contractual agreements are really for when there are
| disagreements. I thought that was a novel way to think
| about them.
| Twirrim wrote:
| Amazon seems to start taking legal action every year or
| so over non-competes, makes a splash in the tech press,
| and then comes to an agreement. I'm at least half
| convinced it's just to ensure the non-compete can't be
| argued to be null and void via failure to enforce.
|
| IIRC the non-compete is pretty wide ranging from Amazon.
| Makes it almost impossible to get another tech job,
| depending on how you interpret certain phrases. Fun
| stuff.
| vkou wrote:
| The problem is that you have no idea whether or not
| Amazon will find something in your behaviour to disagree
| with. And if they do, you have no idea whether it will be
| a reasonable disagreement.
| sbarre wrote:
| Yeah that's true, but it's also important to have a solid
| mutual understanding of your arrangement up front, when
| all parties can be objective and (hopefully) fair-minded,
| as opposed to when there is an actual problem and
| everything is subjective and everyone is self-interested.
|
| An old boss used to say "good friends make for good
| paperwork".
| onion2k wrote:
| _(Claim at the time was because Amazon had its own game
| studio?!)_
|
| https://amazongames.com/ make games and a game engine
| called Lumberyard https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/ that's
| based on CryEngine.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Sure. But why does that conflict with Amazon devs making
| their own games? If anything it seems like the engines
| could benefit from it.
| abj wrote:
| Not defending Amazon, I'm an indie game dev who wants to
| own his off work hours side project. But Amazon Game
| Studios is releasing a game called "New World" this year.
| [1]
|
| [1]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_(video_game)
| cameronbrown wrote:
| What's next? Banning unapproved use of maths? I mean, what if
| you invent the next million dollar equation without giving it
| to Apple... can't have that. Also, I guess if you're a hardware
| engineer... well, I guess you can't use your tools to fix your
| car anymore. Search engineer? No more regex's for you.
| m463 wrote:
| MIT math is ok, but GPLv3 math is a no-no.
| cameronbrown wrote:
| Definitely wouldn't want to use viral licenses for maths,
| would we?
| robenkleene wrote:
| While I agree with you, I also find Joel Spolsky's blog post on
| the subject to be a thought provoking view of "side projects"
| from the employers' perspective
| https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr...
| mikestew wrote:
| Thought-provoking, indeed:
|
| "Before I start: be careful before taking legal advice from
| the Internet."
|
| He got that much right, at least. I'm not going to argue
| every point, but as one with a broad range of experience on
| the topic I'd say there's enough wrong with that article to
| go find my advice somewhere else.
| SeanLuke wrote:
| Right off the bat Joel makes what appears to be a very
| serious mistake regarding work for hire. His opening logic is
| as follows:
|
| - When you hire a contract photographer to make some
| pictures, he owns the copyright on those pictures even though
| you hired him.
|
| - The same goes for your programmer _employees_. They own the
| copyright on their work.
|
| - Therefore you need to require your programmer employees to
| sign an agreement to sign their work over to you.
|
| I am not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that's a gross
| misunderstanding of work for hire. If someone is your
| _employee_ , they are doing work for hire and you own the
| copyright on their product. Photographers own their work
| because they were _independent contractors_ and thus their
| work was not work for hire. I believe work for hire doesn 't
| apply to patents, thus possibly justifying a patent
| agreement. But seriously, this (AFAIK) broken explanation is
| his opening justification?
| ilamont wrote:
| > When you hire a contract photographer to make some
| pictures, he owns the copyright on those pictures even
| though you hired him.
|
| Depends on how the two parties set up the deal.
|
| If you want the copyright or to change the license in some
| way that gives you (the publisher) more rights, the
| agreement will spell out those details and you could up
| spending more (maybe a lot more). I sometimes work with
| professional photographers and for pre-existing work I pay
| for a non-exclusive license that costs less than a
| commissioned piece. I also use stock photography
| extensively which works in a similar manner.
|
| For commissioned photography or design work I'll insist on
| owning the copyright and the agreement will spell out that
| it's not work-for-hire:
|
| _To the extent that the Provider's Work includes any work
| of authorship entitled to protection under the laws of
| copyright, the parties acknowledge and agree that (i) the
| Provider's Work has been specially ordered and commissioned
| by Publisher as a contribution to a collective work, a
| supplementary work, a translation, or such other category
| of work as may be eligible for treatment as a "commissioned
| work" and a "work made for hire" under the United States
| Copyright Act; (ii) the Provider is an independent
| contractor and not an employee, partner, joint author or
| joint venturer of Publisher; (iii) the Provider's 's Work
| shall be deemed a "commissioned work" and a "work made for
| hire" to the greatest extent permitted by law; and (iv)
| Publisher shall be the sole author of the Provider's Work
| and the Work, and the sole owner of original materials
| embodying Work and the Work, and /or any works derived
| therefrom._
|
| Of course, the photographer or designer can opt to reject
| these terms, or make additional demands upon the publisher
| (more money, the right to use images in their own
| promotional materials, etc.)
|
| Not sure how it works with independent contractors doing
| programming.
| Slartie wrote:
| I don't know the exact legal situation in the US, but let
| me assure you, the described legal copyright situation is
| very much possible, because German copyright works exactly
| like that.
|
| I am a software developer, so I write software. I am
| employed full-time by an employer for which I (usually)
| write code, documentation and such, and still I own the
| copyright to each and every line of code or documentation
| or whatever I write. Simply because copyright in German law
| is non-transferrable. Even if I want to, I cannot sign over
| the copyright to anybody else, hence my employer couldn't
| make me sign it over to him in my employment contract.
| Instead, there's a clause that I grant my employer an
| exclusive and irrevocable right to use the work I create
| during my paid work time in any way he wants. This
| effectively leaves me with the copyright, but I don't have
| any rights to profit off of that work anymore, so that
| copyright isn't of much use to me.
| fragmede wrote:
| > copyright in German law is non-transferrable. > I grant
| my employer an exclusive and irrevocable right to use the
| work
|
| I am curious, what rights _have_ you retained with your
| work then? What are the corner cases where you might you
| still want exercise your copyright?
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Is there any observable difference between copyright
| being reassigned from employee to company vs copyright
| remaining with the individual but the company getting
| automatic exclusive and irrevocable use of the copyright?
| droithomme wrote:
| You have the right to be identified as the author of the
| work.
| LinaLauneBaer wrote:
| You have every right to profit according to German law.
| You have to be compensated appropriately for your
| employer to be allowed to use what you hold the copyright
| for. Usually this is ensured by your monthly salary.
| However, if what you did and hold the copyright for
| becomes a surprise success you have to be compensated
| appropriately in addition to your salary. In practical
| terms, if your code makes a billion bucks and you only
| get a regular average salary you could sue the employer
| and would probably win.
| paulclinger wrote:
| I see Joel's point, but I'm not convinced it needs to be that
| broad. My (consulting) contract limits my IP rights
| assignment to "all IP right created in the course of
| providing services to or for the benefits of Company", which
| allows me to work on other projects, even though they may be
| related to Company's line of work (but not to my provided
| services).
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Next thing ya know they'll prohibit their employees from
| playing Factorio, because it's too much like programming.
| wlll wrote:
| Is that even legal? In my mind, if you want to dictate what I
| do in my non-work time, you pay me for the time.
| aeonflux wrote:
| Almost every company tries to force non-competition clauses
| in agreements. Even if they let one do side gigs, one can't
| work for competitor. This does sound reasonable and yet is a
| limitation on what you can do in your spare time.
| bcaa7f3a8bbc wrote:
| By default it's not. However, if you join FAANG, chances are
| that you'll be required to sign a contract that basically
| says "I waive my rights of doing side-projects to to the
| greatest possible extents under the laws of California". When
| speaking of contributing to open source, Google generally has
| a more positive image, but there are still occasions that
| something could only be released after being reviewed by the
| legal department if it's work-related. On the other hand,
| Apple is known to have strict restrictions.
| cosmotic wrote:
| In some states, it is not legal for employers to take
| ownership of employees work off hours using their own
| equipment. Most employers still sneak these into their
| employment agreements even though they can't be enforced.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Yes, due to certain provisions in California Labor Code which
| allow for curtailing what you can do in fields that compete
| with your employer (in a large company, this generally means
| anything could fall under this).
| non-entity wrote:
| I cant say for sure, but I'd imagine so. As long as what you
| are doing isn't protected by some law, I imagine a company
| can discipline / fire you for whatever they please.
| m463 wrote:
| Apple engineers are prohibited from eating lunch with friends
| at other companies in the valley (because of the things you
| have to sign to get a visitor badge for lunch)
| ghostpepper wrote:
| As someone who works at a company that provides no free lunch
| / on site cafeteria, this does not seem so draconian. You can
| just see your friends at a restaurant?
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Since when, and says who?
|
| My grad school friend(s) at Google visited Apple, and I
| visited elsewhere similarly, when working at Apple HQ. Not
| scandalous in the least.
| Rochus wrote:
| Their secret police will still come after you, even if you
| change jobs.
| olalonde wrote:
| Makes you wonder how many GitHub accounts are pseudonyms for
| people who want to hide their open source contributions from
| their employer. (cue _Damn It Feels Good To Be A Gangsta_ )
| [deleted]
| gnulinux wrote:
| I have a pseudonym account that I write all my software in.
| Currently my employer does not restrict me working on side-
| projects; however, I still don't want my professional persona
| to be associated with my side-projects.
| jtdev wrote:
| WTF Apple..?! Is this due to some fear of IP leaking via
| employees contributing to OSS?
| bitwize wrote:
| Yes, and it is a legitimate fear. Someone with access to
| Apple's IP may unintentionally or even inadvertently leak that
| IP in an open-source project. Say you developed a clever new
| optimization on the job at Apple. You use the same trick in
| your open source code, thinking it's no big deal, it's just one
| small piece of code. But that code is now the property of
| Apple, and they may consider it more valuable than you do. It
| may enable, for instance, faster encryption with one of their
| custom chips. That's an edge they have in the marlet that they
| might lose were it not for exclusive use of that bit of code.
| They could lose millions -- meaning they could sue you for
| millions. In a court of law, it is sufficient to prove that the
| defendant had access to the infringed work and that their work
| is substantially similar to the infringed work in order to have
| a case for copyright infringement.
|
| Rather than risk that sort of loss, Apple and many other
| companies include clauses forbidding employees from working on
| outside software projects even in their spare time as standard
| boilerplate in their employment contracts. If you don't want to
| play by those rules, don't work for the company. They can find
| plenty of top-tier engineers who will gladly play by those
| rules.
| gnulinux wrote:
| Ok ok, you're taking this way over the top. No engineer ever
| invents a new optimization that will give Apple competitive
| advantage and they don't know this is important and
| "accidentally" put it on OSS code. I don't believe this for a
| minute. Inventions that give companies technical competitive
| advantage are created via multiple iteration by a team of
| engineers, by them doing research. It's never the case that
| someone wakes up one day and writes code that can be
| considered an "invention". It usually starts with an engineer
| finding a problem, another engineer doing research on this
| problem for some time, and then to improve found solutions, a
| group of engineers discuss viable solutions.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| I think large corporations are big targets for frivolous
| lawsuits, so they grow big paranoid legal teams. Those
| teams succeed based on crossing every t and dotting every
| i, so they eventually look for any threats, no matter how
| small. Eventually it turns inward and they start stifling
| innovation by trying to handcuff their own developers,
| because there's some small chance they could accidentally
| leak something.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Whenever this topic comes up HN reacts first with disbelief, like
| you're lying. Nice to see this awful practice getting some
| exposure from the Twittersphere. As someone who's worked in large
| companies for most of his career, this has been a major trade-off
| of accepting the offers: You need to shelf your open source work
| and any hobby programming you think you might one day release.
| Period. These companies have armies of lawyers vs. just you.
| People here will spout off a bunch of simple solutions like "just
| negotiate, bro." You may be a whiz at negotiating your salary,
| but you are likely to not get anywhere negotiating legal terms
| like this with a FAANG company. If you try the cute "strike
| through the clause in your employment agreement and initial it"
| trick that HN will advise, I guarantee you will get a stern
| letter from Legal in 2-7 days telling you to sign it unmodified
| or GTFO. Ask me how I know.
| dman wrote:
| How do you know?
| BossingAround wrote:
| What did the tweet say? It's deleted now.
| founditincache wrote:
| http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps...
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Because I don't 100% trust this to stay up (and because it's
| a bit hard to find the actual content without css):
|
| > Apple doesn't let employees contribute to unapproved OSS
| projects (even in their personal time). So some of my
| projects could use a maintainer to manage PRs: -
| https://github.com/mdiep/Tentacle -
| https://github.com/mdiep/Logician -
| https://github.com/SwiftGit2/SwiftGit2 ... If you're
| interested, please let me know!
|
| >> I'd love to help out with Tentacle! I'll take a look at
| open issues and PRs today
|
| > Awesome, thanks! I just gave you access. Tentacle is very
| low maintenance, but there's a Swift 5.2 PR open now that
| looks like it may need a little help.
|
| >> Has this ever been enforced that you know of? What are the
| consequences?
|
| > No idea. [shrug emoji]
| juliansimioni wrote:
| Because it took me a minute to find the tweet text on that
| page:
|
| > Apple doesn't let employees contribute to unapproved OSS
| projects (even in their personal time). So some of my
| projects could use a maintainer to manage PRs: -
| https://github.com/mdiep/Tentacle -
| https://github.com/mdiep/Logician -
| https://github.com/SwiftGit2/SwiftGit2 ... If you're
| interested, please let me know!
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| floatingatoll wrote:
| HN may find this unpalatable, but it's still legal and
| permissible.
|
| Apple indicates this restriction against personal project work
| prior to hiring, and employees agree as part of being hired to
| adhere to it. If they do not, they are not hired.
|
| Non-compete bans are generally structured to prohibit restricting
| an ex-employee's choice of work after their departure, but only
| once you are an ex-employee and not before. I am aware of no laws
| guaranteeing the inalienable right to create and publish software
| IP while contractually bound not to do so.
|
| Apple's restriction does not prohibit contribution of work to
| open-source projects, but permits only those contributions
| approved by Apple as necessary and appropriate by Apple's
| decision. The personal projects linked here were either denied
| that permission or never submitted for it.
|
| Personally, I'd have to think quite hard about whether to accept
| this restriction if I considered working for Apple someday.
| Silver lining, my tiny projects are all unused abandonware, so it
| wouldn't require finding new maintainers. I don't envy the author
| of the linked tweet their duty to find others.
| himinlomax wrote:
| > HN may find this unpalatable, but it's still legal and
| permissible.
|
| It's obviously legal and for obvious reasons, but it's both
| hostile to the culture of the profession at large AND
| counterproductive.
| woodrowbarlow wrote:
| it is not obvious. the law in question (for california) is CA
| labor code 2870.
|
| https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2011/lab/division-3/.
| ..
|
| the law says that employers cannot claim ownership of
| inventions made without work resources, even if the employee
| signed such a clause, unless the invention is in competition
| with the employer.
| nomel wrote:
| > unless the invention is in competition with the employer.
|
| Companies like Google, Apple, and Amazon work on all sorts
| of projects. I don't think it's possible to know what is
| actually in competition with companies like this, at any
| given time. This is probably why most require permission.
| With somewhere like Apple, where everything is kept secret,
| asking and being told no would confirm the existence of a
| project.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| It's not _obviously_ legal. Highlights from today 's
| discussion here indicate some confusion about that point:
|
| > _Being the status quo for technical companies doesn 't make
| it legal_
|
| > _Is that even legal?_
|
| > _That position, legally enforceable or otherwise_
| nathancahill wrote:
| Wow, glad I passed on an Apple interview.
| xyst wrote:
| Still a good company to get an offer from. Most companies are
| willing to budge the compensation packages to meet the
| competition.
| bitwize wrote:
| Apple's IP, and their zealous guarding thereof, is why most of
| y'all carry MacBooks to work instead of Dells. So before you open
| your mouth to criticize, think about how policies like Apple's
| actually allow them more freedom to innovate.
| saagarjha wrote:
| It is possible to contribute to open source without infringing
| on Apple's IP.
| bitwize wrote:
| It's too risky for an Apple employee to do so willy-nilly.
| saagarjha wrote:
| It's too risky because Apple will go after you even if
| you're not infringing, not because you're using trade
| secrets or patents from your job.
| t0astbread wrote:
| Slavery, is why most of y'all carry cheap clothing. So before
| you open your mouth to criticize, think about how policies like
| slavery actually allow clothing manufacturers to lower their
| prices.
| BossingAround wrote:
| Leaving zealous guarding of IP behind worked pretty well for
| Linux, the de-facto standard in server-side and cloud OS.
|
| I wonder how far would Apple's design go if other people and
| outsiders could hack on it freely.
| layoutIfNeeded wrote:
| Just "transfer" ownership to your girlfriend or your brother and
| make contributions in their names. Problem solved.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Do you think Apple's legal team is stupid?
| layoutIfNeeded wrote:
| Ok, if you're that paranoid then use a pseudonym -\\_(tsu)_/-
| louwrentius wrote:
| Original tweet: (now gone)
|
| Apple doesn't let employees contribute to unapproved OSS projects
| (even in their personal time).
|
| So some of my projects could use a maintainer to manage PRs:
| <cut> If you're interested, please let me know!
| ProAm wrote:
| I dont feel like helping a developer who's employer doesnt
| respect its customers or its employees.... It sounds like this is
| the trade off he gets for working there?
|
| I wish it werent like this, people should be able to work on
| whatever they feel like in their own personal time.
| levosmetalo wrote:
| Of course, people can work on whatever they like on their free
| time. The developer in case _chooses_ to abandon his open-
| source projects to work for a company of his choice. Nobody
| forced him to take this job, it was his choice.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _The developer in case chooses to abandon his open-source
| projects to work for a company of his choice. Nobody forced
| him to take this job, it was his choice._
|
| This is so reductionist that it's blind to reality.
| bigbob2 wrote:
| So I guess the idea here is that as long as you're an
| employee of Apple, you have no free time?
| [deleted]
| sdwolfz wrote:
| While not employed at Apple, I too have a clause in my employment
| contract (UK) that states I "assign copyright and IP rights
| produced by me in the course of my employment, whether during
| normal hours of business or otherwise, or at the premises or
| using company facilities or otherwise". I was told by my manager
| that I need to notify them if I plan to contribute/create an open
| source project, and even had one open source project I created
| get claimed by the company since I used it for one of my work
| tasks even though I created it for personal use initially, in my
| personal time, because "I could not prove that I developed it
| independently of my company work needs" and was told "if you
| don't like this then why are you still working here".
|
| What I want to know is how exactly do you go about getting that
| part of you contract removed so you own copyright and IP for work
| you do on your free time without the need to justify it to your
| employer?
|
| I tried speaking with my company's legal department and they
| slightly re-worded the contract to say the same thing (basically
| lied to me as later my project's ownership was claimed), all my
| managers so far did not take me seriously and basically ignored
| my request to change/remove this clause, or told me they would
| approve anything and it would be open source anyway (another lie
| as my project was taken) to the point I gave up, reduced my OSS
| contributions greatly and only worked on things I confirmed
| previously were OK for me to do, which added a lot of useless
| bureaucracy and got me demotivated.
|
| The only thing I can come up with was quitting my job after I
| negotiate with another employer to not have such a clause in my
| contract. But I have not done any interviewing yet, so I don't
| know if that is even possible.
|
| Any ideas/hints/help would be greatly appreciated!
| d-sc wrote:
| You're on the right track. Find a different job where they
| respect your projects and move on. You don't really have much
| leverage right now as your current place doesn't have much
| inventive to change their policy and doesn't seem to respect
| your requests.
| imron wrote:
| > how exactly do you go about getting that part of you contract
| removed
|
| They told you that already "if you don't like this then why are
| you still working here".
|
| The way to get this limitation removed is to hand in your
| resignation. Preferably after finding another job.
|
| Make sure that before you sign a contract at the new place,
| that you strike out anything in the contract that requires you
| to hand over IP of things developed outside of company time and
| outside of company resources.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _Make sure that before you sign a contract at the new
| place, that you strike out anything in the contract that
| requires you to hand over IP of things developed outside of
| company time and outside of company resources._
|
| Practically impossible with companies moving to electronic
| forms. I've found every electronic form presented to me has
| had less than zero ability to actually negotiate with the
| other party.
| brundolf wrote:
| These policies, when they exist, tend to be very entrenched in
| the organization. The legal department will push management to
| keep them so they can avoid the associated risks.
|
| I would look for another job. While these clauses are
| relatively common, it's also relatively easy to find employers
| with less restricting policies. You'll probably have better
| luck at tech-led companies, in general. I think I've also heard
| that California's employment law doesn't allow this sort of
| thing, FWIW.
| ace32229 wrote:
| What legal risk is the company at without a clause like this?
| ghostpepper wrote:
| I am not a lawyer but my guess is their fear (no idea how
| plausible) would be a situation where an employee creates
| an open source project and uses it at work in a way where
| it becomes critical to the business, then later leaves the
| company and demands some sort of royalties/licensing
| megous wrote:
| If it's opensource under the usual OSS licenses, the
| former emplpyee can only demand something for further
| work/improvements, not for already existing code.
|
| And companies typically have no trouble critically
| relying on OSS projects they have no chance of
| forking/maintaining if something changes that they can't
| accept.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Your employee creates your direct competitor.
| burnte wrote:
| I have never signed a non-compete or a "we own everything you
| do" clause. However, rather than just saying no, I offer a
| compromise. I agree not to go after clients if I leave, and I
| agree anything I make ON COMPANY TIME is solely the property of
| the company.
|
| It's been a non-started for a couple of companies, but if
| that's the case, I don't want to work for them anyway.
|
| Once I worked for a company, and me and the owner had a
| disagreement that wasn't resolvable so I said that I'd have to
| quit. She leaned back, smirked, and said, "remember that you
| signed a non-compete." I simply replied, "No, I didn't." She
| suddenly had an "oh crap" look on her face and looked at the HR
| director, who said, "I thought I'd get him to sign it later so
| we let it slide when he came on." The owner then tried to stop
| me from leaving, but after seeing that shark smile on her face
| I knew it was only a matter of time before she found another
| way to screw me and left anyway.
|
| There are more of us than there are them. We all need to stop
| agreeing to these clauses.
| jariel wrote:
| "how exactly do you go about getting that part of you contract
| removed so you own copyright and IP "
|
| You don't.
|
| One of the reasons companies want this clause is to limit their
| liability and exposure. They're not going to make a dime off of
| your side-show projects, so it's really not about the money,
| it's about the risk.
|
| Their IP clauses will have been gone over and over by lawyers,
| and the costs involved in making exceptions/changes is very
| expensive, partly in billable hours, but mostly in risk.
|
| Put another way: having 'your own special contract' is like
| 'roll your own security'. It just opens up 'legal attack
| surfaces' and it's just not worth it for a company that has a
| lot of money or IP, which makes them a troll target.
|
| There'd generally have to be a pretty good reason for you to
| want to work on it, that also makes sense to the company, but
| obviously risk tolerances vary as well.
| danharaj wrote:
| This is the sort of policy imposed company-wide where trying to
| get an individual exception is very difficult or impossible
| depending on how bureaucratic your organization is, possibly
| even damaging your career and relationships with your managers.
| This is exactly the kind of policy change that a union could
| help tech workers with.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Ctrl+F "union" 1 result
|
| Of course next time tech unions come up, there will be 10
| stories of how their uncle wasn't allowed to plug in a
| ventilator because he wasn't a union electrician or
| something.
| rectang wrote:
| If you have side projects that you want to keep ownership of,
| your options are limited.
|
| California Labor Code 2870 and similar laws in some other
| states protect you under certain circumstances. However, you
| basically cannot go work for one of the bigs, for two reasons.
|
| First, these laws only protect you if the project doesn't
| relate to the business, and the bigs operate in so many
| different spheres that basically any software project can be
| argued as relating to their business.
|
| Second, it doesn't matter what the law is if a huge company
| decides to sue you -- they will throw lawyers at you until you
| are bankrupt.
|
| What you _can_ do to minimize your risk is work for a small
| company which does not overlap with the space that your side
| projects are in. They still might go after you anyway at some
| point (companies can get bought and new owners may have more
| resources and more inclination to sue), but for open source the
| odds that it happens are very small.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| If it helps, I have negotiated with companies in the US and the
| UK to have that clause modified to be more liberal so that I
| could continue to work on open source stuff.
|
| It's easier when they offer you the job but all large companies
| will have lawyers who know what to do. It just takes
| willingness on their part.
|
| Smaller companies might just be using a boilerplate contract so
| you might want to suggest alterations.
|
| Basically the company wants you so they should bend.
| sdwolfz wrote:
| Could you please share how the clause is written on your
| contract now, as opposed to how it was initially? Just to get
| an idea of how something like that is worded. I could go to
| them and request my contract say "this" instead of "that" and
| see what they tell me.
| dhess wrote:
| I spent most of my career in Silicon Valley, where
| employers routinely take the position that they own every
| thought their employees have, and every work they create.
| That position, legally enforceable or otherwise, has always
| rankled me.
|
| I've recently moved to the UK to start a tech business here
| (https://www.hackworthltd.uk), and now that I'm on the
| other side of the table, I very much wanted to create a
| personal projects policy that was as employee-friendly as
| possible, while still protecting the interests of the
| business. I hired a UK IP lawyer to help me draft an
| acceptable policy, and I'm happy to share that with you, if
| it helps.
|
| The intellectual property section of our employment
| contract is mostly standard boilerplate, as I understand
| it, except that it refers to our personal projects policy,
| which is contained in our staff handbook. I've copied the
| relevant sections of both and put them here:
|
| https://gist.github.com/dhess/21b7d2d72c4f9d4e0cdd8004385ef
| 7...
|
| Please feel free to use it as a reference in future
| negotiations with your employer(s).
|
| Comments from others are also welcome! I'm open to any
| suggestions for how it could be improved.
| sdwolfz wrote:
| Thank you for posting that gist, here are some things
| that I'm interested in:
|
| - 2.2.a I would like to not be required to tell you about
| them at all, and not need an approval from you before I
| contribute/develop, unless 2.2.b and 2.2.c apply. So
| basically the contract should forbid me to develop a
| project that directly competes with anything your company
| is doing (as it is right now). In case it's not competing
| I _could_ ask for your _opinion_ , in case I am unsure I
| am advised to ask, otherwise I'm responsible, and in case
| it has elements that are in competition, or work relevant
| then I _need_ ask for your _permission_.
|
| - 2.2.k about projects that someone "might otherwise
| consider inappropriate", isn't this going to far? I think
| 2.2.m (We cannot be held responsible or liable for
| anything to do with your personal project) and 4.2 should
| be enough, you don't need to act as a moral authority to
| be able to defend the company against employee wrongdoing
| outside of work.
|
| - not sure how this situation (that I detailed in my
| post) would be handled by your clauses: a project/library
| I develop on my free time but end up using at work. The
| company should not claim it as it's own, any thought on
| that?
| tracker1 wrote:
| I line out portions like that when they're overly restrictive
| and not limited to work time on work systems. I've never gotten
| much push back. Worst case, I wouldn't take such a job... it's
| something I look at very carefully and ask about during
| interviewing.
| endgame wrote:
| I don't believe that you will get any traction in your current
| company. Not when you have proof that the company is willing
| and able to lie to you. While not easy in the current
| environment, line up a new job. Sort IP assignment out during
| negotiations, and make it clear that if they want to own your
| brain 24/7 they need to pay extra for that privilege.
|
| Hiring negotiations are the point where you have greatest
| leverage - the company won't want to burn another bucket of
| money screening bozos. They've decided they want you. Go read
| patio11's post on salary negotiation to get the correct
| mindset.
|
| An anecdote: my current employer's _standard_ contract
| basically says "we own what you do for us, you own what you do
| for yourself, and if you're getting close to a grey area you
| should speak with legal". So there are businesses out there
| that do this.
| dfawcus wrote:
| As far as assigning copyright, that clause probably has no
| effect, simply due the legislation already saying the employer
| holds the copyright.
|
| The IP rights part may have an effect depending upon how it is
| phrased, and what it covers (say patents).
|
| See Copyrights, Designs, and Patents Act, 1988; section 11
|
| http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/section/11
|
| "11 First ownership of copyright.
|
| (1)The author of a work is the first owner of any copyright in
| it, subject to the following provisions.
|
| (2)Where a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work [F1, or
| a film,] is made by an employee in the course of his
| employment, his employer is the first owner of any copyright in
| the work subject to any agreement to the contrary."
|
| Computer programs are deemed to be a "literary work".
|
| The important part is that the work has to be "in the course of
| employment".
|
| If the s/w does not relate to what the company does, then it
| would not be such. IANAL.
|
| There are some employment contracts which widen the scope to
| cover stuff which is not in the course of employment.
|
| You have already stated how one gets such resolved. Discuss
| with the employer and agree a change, or leave.
| sdwolfz wrote:
| I am not a native English speaker so excuse my ignorance, but
| how is "in the course of employment" different from "during
| employment", or "while employed". Don't all of them pretty
| much mean "for as long as I have an employment contract with
| the company"? Or does the word "course" mean something
| different in this case?
| dfawcus wrote:
| Well there is this: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/ownership-
| of-copyright-works
|
| I've generally interpreted it as meaning acts performed in
| fulfilling your role/position as an employee. So if you're
| essentially doing free work for your employer on your own
| time, at home, using your equipment, it belongs to them.
|
| Stuff done which has nothing to do with your employment,
| created on your own time, with your own resources, belongs
| to you.
|
| Otherwise every poem, sketch, photo, or even a letter you
| wrote, etc that you create would be their copyright, which
| is patently a nonsense unless your contract explicitly
| states that. It would state such if "course" it referred to
| the time you were their employee.
|
| The difficulty occurs where there could be a conflict of
| interest between what you create privately, using your own
| resources, and what the company employees you to do. So
| don't do that. However that may be difficult for companies
| which have their fingers in a lot of pies.
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| Find another company to work for and then have a Chinese wall
| between work and home. Non-competes are basically illegal in
| the UK and most employers should be able to say "don't work on
| X areas". Remind them that work you do in your own time will
| benefit them as well.
|
| I have none of my personal project code on my work laptop, I've
| never searched or thought about personal project work on it and
| I never take professional development time in work hours
| (unlike many other members of staff).
|
| I'm at work to work for the company, I'm at home to work on
| myself. I never blur the lines, the downside to this is that my
| employer massively benefits from my time investment at home but
| oh well, it makes me better at my job and so I'm happier.
| mprev wrote:
| There are circumstances in which non-competes are enforceable
| in the UK. Even if it doesn't technically apply to your
| situation, it can end up with a court deciding. At the least,
| a bloody minded employer can make it too expensive and
| painful to hire you by taking out an injunction against the
| new employer.
|
| Sadly, thinking non-competes don't apply in the UK has led
| people to sign them glibly and then face problems later.
| jlpicard wrote:
| Man, I feel you. Early on in my career I was working at a
| pretty large digital agency and I was commiting some PRs to
| jQuery Mobile ( remember when that was a thing ). We were using
| it a lot on projects within the agency so occasionaly I would
| do this on company time - after all, I needed things fixed for
| us to be able to use it.
|
| The jQuery Mobile team eventually asked if I was interested in
| helping out more as part of the core team and asked if my
| company might 'donate' a few days a month in time to the
| project etc etc -- I asked my manager who thought it was a good
| idea, but that because of the whole clause BS in my contract, I
| should clear it with the legal team.
|
| Nope.
|
| It became a massive thing for months, a lot of emails and
| meetings back and fourth. Eventually I managed to get everyones
| contract changed but ONLY for OSS. The short of it was that
| they came around to the idea that no one can OWN OSS.
|
| If it was done on company time, then any worked should be
| cleared by line managers on a project ( because we might be
| using the library ).
|
| If it was done outside of company time, then no bother.
|
| Any potential tools developed in-house that might be good for
| open sourcing, went through a proposal system and tech leads
| from within the company made the call.
|
| I know its not perfect, but I would try this approach. Start by
| making a list of as many OSS projects, tools etc that your
| company already uses and make a case for creating an open
| source culture within the company.
|
| Go to your legal team and be specific about why nobody can own
| something thats open.
|
| Fight to change your contract ( and everyone elses ),
| specifically for OSS.
|
| When it comes to side-projects that might become a thing ...
| thats what pseudo github accounts are for ;)
| aeonflux wrote:
| I am not from US, but isn't that kind of standard practice in US?
| While working at any company they can hold right to everything
| you do in the field.
|
| While outrageous at the first glance it does make a lot of sense
| for me. If you wan't to work on your side project you should quit
| your job. Otherwise there is a big risk you might quickly burn
| out, be less effective at your main work.
|
| People seem to critique overtime and time pressure on software
| engineers. At they same time they want to be able to code their
| startups after hours effectively working 15 hour per day.
|
| Working on open source projects instead of side gigs doesn't
| differ much in that regard. You might hook up on your project and
| spend tons of mental energy on it, making your main job suffer.
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| That's a theory that develops from "work is the most important
| thing in your life".
|
| It's not the only correct starting assumption.
|
| Other things that develop from it are "employees shouldn't be
| allowed to have kids as it might sap mental energy from your
| job" - which is clearly a ludicrous position, but not dis-
| similar.
| aeonflux wrote:
| Quite the contrary in my opinion. This kind of limitations
| does force many to actually rest after hours.
| mercer wrote:
| To rest for what? To be more productive at work?
|
| I'd argue your point isn't 'quite the contrary' but only
| emphasizes OP's point: you describe the time outside of
| work as 'after hours', and argue that 'forcing' people to
| spend this time in a particular way is a good thing.
| inetknght wrote:
| Your method of resting differs from others'.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Yeah, this is standard practice at Big Cos in the US. I had to
| jump through hoops to send back contributions for an OSS I was
| modifying as part of work. This would have been a huge win for
| the company too, as I wouldn't have to spend time maintaining
| the software as updates were pushed.
|
| Alas, it took so much time to get approval that we abandon our
| work and the OSS software. The most I was able to give back to
| a project that I made serious improvements for was a few bug
| fixes. And those were done without approval.
|
| I work for a smaller company now and they ask for notification,
| but don't take ownership of OSS work.
| b3kart wrote:
| Yeah, this rule is clearly enforced by companies to protect
| their employees' well-being. Just billion-dollar corporations
| being sensitive and protective, as per usual. /s
| aeonflux wrote:
| I am not sure where the sarcasm comes from. This actually
| supports the company, because exhausted, overworked and
| sleepy coders aren't much of a use for anyone.
|
| On the other hand employees have harder times to push their
| own ventures. I once worked with a guy doing some personal
| pet project on the side. Nothing came from it in the end, but
| it was consuming him to the point, when he was doing some
| work on this during work hours.
| b3kart wrote:
| I am not sure how one can avoid being sarcastic here. You
| honestly believe top execs at these companies have sat down
| and decided to ban OSS contributions because that makes for
| exhausted, overworked employees? Not saner, more flexible
| working hours, not more vacation time, not on-site nap
| rooms and such, they've decided? All of the things that,
| you know, might actually help. Nah, coders are just tired
| because they work on OSS in their free time. Come on now.
|
| They're simply protecting their IP as much as they possibly
| can. If they could ban you from using a computer at all in
| your free time, without getting sued into oblivion for
| violating human rights and such, they would.
| aeonflux wrote:
| Apple doesn't provide any of those in your opinion? I can
| imagine having everything you pointed and then ban on
| side projects (paid or not). And yes, working on OSS
| might actually be even more exhausting than a day job.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I think I can do a fairly good job at deciding what I do
| outside of work, thank you very much.
| Rochus wrote:
| This is regulated differently in the different countries. It is
| common that the intellectual property you create in the course
| of your employment automatically belongs to your employer. But
| of course, it is not your employer's business what you do in
| your spare time (as long as you do not use infrastructure or
| intellectual property of your employer for this purpose). See
| e.g.
| http://www.iprhelpdesk.eu/sites/default/files/newsdocuments/...
| kec wrote:
| Apple is a software company which produces operating systems,
| programming languages and applications. How are you supposed
| to prove that you aren't using knowledge gleaned from Apple
| in your OSS side hustle? Given the breadth of Apples
| offerings, how could you possibly have a software project
| which doesn't overlap with one of their businesses?
| saagarjha wrote:
| Practically, you can't. Not only is the breadth of the
| things they work on staggering, there's a number of secret
| projects that you might be falling afoul of as well.
| Rochus wrote:
| Knowledge by itself is no issue and not subject to
| copyright. But you have an issue if you use code or
| libraries (i.e. everything which qualifies as a "work") or
| patents of which you're not the IP owner. I don't know US
| law, but here in Europe workers' rights are well protected.
| Of course, if you do work in competition with your employer
| in your free time, this can be a problem. But the courts
| will only agree with the employer if there is significant
| damage or risk of damage.
| kec wrote:
| I'm guessing things aren't quite so clear cut as you
| think they are. Trivially, Apple has an engineering
| presence in various European countries, it wouldn't make
| sense to have this clause in their employment contract if
| it wasn't applicable everywhere.
| skissane wrote:
| > Trivially, Apple has an engineering presence in various
| European countries, it wouldn't make sense to have this
| clause in their employment contract if it wasn't
| applicable everywhere
|
| Usually, multinational employers have a seperate standard
| employment contract for each country they operate in,
| written with input from local lawyers. So I wouldn't
| assume the IP provisions in Apple's employment contracts
| are exactly the same in every country, although they
| would all be attempting to implement Apple's global
| policies to the extent that each country's legal system
| allows it.
|
| (I have never seen an Apple employment contract, so this
| is informed speculation.)
| Rochus wrote:
| As I said, I don't know US law. But I studied Swiss law
| which is quite similar to the law of other European
| countries. Even though Apple is a large company and
| sometimes behaves as if they are above the law, their
| subsidiaries are still subject to the laws of their
| respective countries. The clauses in their contracts that
| violate applicable national law are invalid.
| tester89 wrote:
| Would such a clause be legally permitted in Switzerland?
| disiplus wrote:
| if im less effective u fire me and that's that. if am able to
| do what you pay me to do in the time you pay me to do it then
| what i do after work is whatever i want.
| aeonflux wrote:
| I would never hire anyone who doesn't want accept non-
| competitive restrictions.
| t0astbread wrote:
| I understand that but when I apply to a job I want an employer,
| not a mother. I'm still able to decide for myself what I can do
| and what would burn me out. And even if that becomes a problem,
| I wouldn't want my employer to (more or less) own me. If I'm
| not productive enough for my company it should just end the
| employment relationship (or try to help me first because that
| could be mutually beneficial).
|
| Also there's a large gap between "starting an open source
| project" and "working on your side project full-time".
| ingenieros wrote:
| Steve Jobs worked at Atari and Wozniak at Hewlett Packard
| during Apple's inception. Do you think Apple would even exist
| today if these two hadn't been able to work on their passion
| project while off the clock??
| aeonflux wrote:
| Great example on why such clauses should be there. This
| didn't really ended well for Atari.
| ingenieros wrote:
| Perhaps you should read up on Atari's history because they
| had much bigger issues than simply letting employees
| moonlight.
| miker64 wrote:
| What did it say, the tweets been deleted.
| bumblebritches5 wrote:
| I'll gladly do it.
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