Yeah, I've negotiated out that clause on a few contracts. I think Google is the same, people who are Googlers with opensourced projects that have nothing to do

Yeah, I've negotiated out that clause on a few contracts. I think Google is the same, people who are Googlers with opensourced projects that have nothing to do with Google all have them hosted on the Google github account for this reason. I'm not in the US but AFAIK US law (or at least Californian law) states that a company can only own what you do in your personal time if it competes with them, the problem is that for companies the size of IBM and Google that could be most things.