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When I worked for IBM (via acquisition), I wanted to fix bugs in Cygwin (owned by Red Hat). Red Hat does not accept patches unless you get permission from your
by jhallenworld 8y ago
When I worked for IBM (via acquisition), I wanted to fix bugs in Cygwin (owned by Red Hat). Red Hat does not accept patches unless you get permission from your current employer. I could not get anybody in IBM to sign Red Hat's permission slip. Nobody would sign because it's all risk, no reward from IBM's point of view.
- linker3000 8y agoDeeply regrettable. One of my colleagues identified and fixed an issue with Duplicity while he was working on a backups subsystem for our server estate, and after a quick check with a Director I was able to sign off the work for release back to the Duplicity project.
- _pmf_ 8y agoThat's more a Red Hat legal failure than a IBM legal failure.
- paulie_a 8y agoHonestly I probably would have just scribbled a name in a terrible hand writing (not hard for me anyways) and called it a day. They just wanted something on file that would never be looked at again.
- jtl999 8y agoCouldn't you just submit patches under a pseudonym?
- dredmorbius 8y agoLinux kernel, as an example, expressly rejects this. Source: multiple discussion with GKH.
- bunderbunder 8y agoI think that, if you were to ask open source maintainers, "What would you think of me committing fraud to get around your project's policies?" most of them would say, "Thanks, but no thanks."
- avar 8y agoYou'd be surprised. I have first & second-hand experience with the maintainers of GNU projects just agreeing to accept patches on the sly and commit them as themselves with the consent of the submitter because the submitter can't be bothered to sign a copyright release form.
- jtl999 8y agoI do understand your point, but I wouldn't spin it that way or bring it up with them, just start committing using a "new" identity, assuming they have no knowledge of your "main" identity. Easier said then done.
- bunderbunder 8y agoThat dishonesty is exactly what makes it fraudulent. They're asking you to sign some legal documentation. If you forge a signature rather than getting it signed by your employer, that's fraud. If you create a false identity in order to hide the fact that you have an employer, that's also fraud. You have exactly two legal (and, just as importantly, honest) options in this situation: Get permission from your employer before contributing, or don't contribute. If you like the project and don't want to create trouble for its maintainers, you will pick one of those two options.
- gbraad 8y agoThe reason this permission exists is that contributions will not be owned by your employer, but will be part of the project. It depends on your employer if they allow you to work on personal software that they do not claim ownership for or not. I think you are right to not use a pseudonym. I once did, and regret having done so.
- p1necone 8y agoThis actually seems like fair policy to me, think of the mess Red Hat would be in if IBM decided that they had copyright on your contributions to Cygwin. Or is my understanding of copyright law off base?
- LordDragonfang 8y agoThat's exactly why Red Hat had said permission slips. The ridiculous thing was that IBM refused to sign them
- mcv 8y agoThe ridiculous thing is that IP law makes this necessary.
- qwerty456127 8y ago> if IBM decided that they had copyright on your contributions to Cygwin. How could they decide this if you'd have written the code on a weekend?
- p1necone 8y agoMany employers have clauses about owning any IP you produce while employed there, regardless of whether or not it involved company time or property. Whether said clauses are actually enforceable varies from location to location.
- XorNot 8y agoAka "justice by bank balance and time". At some point software engineering is going to have a union just as a legal defence fund.
- anticensor 8y agoSoftware engineers already have their own chambers of engineers in some states. No need for another trade organization.
- abtinf 8y agoI left IBM a few months ago, but I led a bunch of developer advocacy efforts for a couple years. There are several internal programs at IBM that enable employees to make contributions to open source with very little bureaucracy. Go to the intranet site w3.developer.ibm.com for details.
- ajdlinux 8y agoI'm a current IBMer, and there is a process for getting CLAs signed - it's a bit bureaucratic if it's not a CLA for a company we already work with, but otherwise IBM has no problems with contributing to projects like that.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y agoI have the same problem in academia, being in a non-CS department, I'm required to notify the University's Center for Technology & Venture Commercialization about assigning my copyright over software to another entity (like the FSF), but so far I have been unsuccessful at getting them to sign the letter the FSF wants, despite the code I would be contributing being completely outside of my work at the University and so therefore theoretically outside of their purview. I suppose the moral is that all large organisations converge towards bureaucratic processes that waste the time of high$/hour employees and attempt to hinder all not immediately commercialisable progress.
- mcv 8y agoI totally understand that large organisations don't want to sign papers about things that are none of their business. It's ridiculous that they need to sign them. This shouldn't be a requirement for Open Source contributions. But with some businesses claiming their employees' unrelated work done in their free time, I can see how this has become a necessity. It's harmful for open source, and a terrible situation that's not to anyone's benefit. I guess US law should make more clear that employers don't own their employees' private work?
- sverhagen 8y agoTotally agreed. I always imagined it stems from historical experiences where staff ran off with ideas that they were paid to have within the scope of their employment. So perhaps this is the only way employers have thought of protecting themselves against that. Ie., what other way do we have to offer them?
- jbergens 8y agoIt's not only owning the outcome that is the problem, if you develop a software system that in any ways competes with your employer they may have a reason to fire and/or sue you. The problem as someone else stated above in this discussion is that with a company the size of IBM it is hard to do anything that is guaranteed not to compete with anything they do.
- 8y ago
- qwerty456127 8y agoI wish Cygwin would get more steam, a new package manager and a repository...
- aepiepaey 8y agoYou could try MSYS2.
- mohammedbin 8y agoWhy wouldn't you use WSL?
- voltagex_ 8y agoWindows < 10/1809 compatibility, ability to ship standalone applications, force of habit, need for something WSL doesn't support. Ironically, Cygwin might be closer to "native" than WSL is in some cases.
- chx 8y ago> need for something WSL doesn't support. Like what...? > Ironically, Cygwin might be closer to "native" than WSL is in some cases. Which cases...?
- Nullabillity 8y ago> Like what...? SQLite, for one. https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/2395 https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/2395
- meditate 8y agoI haven't used Windows in quite some time, but I believe they are quite different. WSL is more like a very basic version of Wine in that it implements Linux system calls and can execute ELF binaries, and as such requires you to install a host OS for libc and any other libraries you want. Cygwin is more like Winelib in that it provides a custom libc implementation and toolchain that are natively compiled, and as such requires you to rebuild your applications.