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Because it's probably not actually "wholly independent". Software developers are thought workers, and you don't get to just check your brain at the door when y

Because it's probably not actually "wholly independent". Software developers are thought workers, and you don't get to just check your brain at the door when you clock out like you could your tools or a laptop. Thus, any similar* work you do on your own time cannot be done without your brain using some of what is in your head, which you learned/figured out on company time. * Now, this is the fun part. Where do you draw the similar line? Think about it: you hire someone to solve a problem. You pay them to figure it out and implement. Then they turn around and implement the same solution, which you paid them to think about, for someone else?

andreyf 16y ago
Think about it: you hire someone to solve a problem. You pay them to figure it out and implement. Then they turn around and implement the same solution, which you paid them to think about, for someone else? That's perfectly fine, and happening all the time. Google got the fastest JS interpreter among all the major browsers (Chrome's V8) by hiring the guy Sun paid a lot of money to do nothing but think about virtual machines for a couple of years. Just because Sun paid for the development of HotSpot doesn't give them any kind of ownership over the ideas, with one exception: for some ideas, they can get government enforced limited time monopolies for the sake of "promoting the Progress of Science and useful Arts" by filing patents for them. But how this applies to Google employees, I don't know: it would seem that Google ought not to be able to claim ownership of all of my ideas simply because I work there while having them. That said, I really can't imagine it being much of a problem if someone just stays honest about things (i.e. not work on a major competitor to their own project).
cookiecaper 16y ago
>Thus, any similar work you do on your own time cannot be done without your brain using some of what is in your head, which you learned/figured out on company time. Should I be writing all my past employers checks because I am using things I learned "on their time"? I had a job where we used CakePHP, and I learned much about the framework during this job; now, should all my future CakePHP work (of which there is hopefully very little) belong to the employer that first facilitated my learning of CakePHP? Should I write a past employer a check when the bad management practices I observed there are avoided due to my past experience? Do they own my wisdom on that subject now? I think you can see where we're going with this. I think that anything that is not performed in the course of your ordinary job duties, not directly related to the company or its primary businesses, and performed outside of company time and facilities blatantly belongs to its original author. >Think about it: you hire someone to solve a problem. You pay them to figure it out and implement. Then they turn around and implement the same solution, which you paid them to think about, for someone else? Uh, yeah, this happens all the time. That's what most consulting firms do. You think when you hire a web firm to build your e-commerce site they always start from scratch on the shopping cart program? The cart was written the first time they had an e-commerce job, and now they reuse it. This is good practice and totally kosher, and should be expected, unless you explicitly request a custom shopping cart program with copyright assignment.
kelnos 16y ago
Thus, any similar work you do on your own time cannot be done without your brain using some of what is in your head, which you learned/figured out on company time. Aside from information that is considered confidential by my employer (in which case it falls under the NDA I signed), what's in my head belongs to me. Yes: me. Just as my employer is able to use knowledge and experience that I've gained from working for previous employers (and on open source projects in my spare time), I must be able to use the knowledge and experience I've gained at my current employer in future (or even current, as long as it's not the same) work. A huge part of the reason I'm so good at the job I do now is because of the 5 years I spent working on Xfce. If my employer gets to leverage that, then I get to leverage what I've learned at my current job. It's mine, plain and simple. That may not be exactly what the law says -- it's hard to read it and specifically say what's allowed and what isn't without a lawyer, and even then I'm sure they disagree -- but anything less is knowledge-servitude. Now, as to the "similar" bit: I think a large company like Google could easily claim that the vast majority of personal projects done by its employees is "similar" enough to something someone somewhere in the company is working on that they are entitled to ownership under current law and policy. Even if it's not related to the work that the employee actually does for the company. And that's not cool. Yes, I think it's cool that Google is so willing to allow its employees to open source so much Google-owned code. But that's not enough. Look at it the other way: if it's "no big deal" for the employee to assign copyright to Google because it's released under a liberal open source license like BSD, then why isn't it "no big deal" to allow the employee to retain copyright? Aside from prestige, what does Google gain from owning copyright on BSD-licensed code? As a person who writes software, a part of my resume is the body of open source code listed under my copyright. Sure, you can look at commit logs to find out who wrote the code, but it's much less impressive to be a contributor listed under your employer's umbrella.
rdtsc 16y ago
> Software developers are thought workers ... That is why I think it should go both ways and they should be forced to pay overtime for whenever a worker claims to have "thought" about the problem in their free time. Imagine the scenario: you are on the beach with the family but, since you are a "thought" worker, your mind wonders so you think for 30 minutes about how to decrease the latency of that DB query. That should be 30 min of overtime billed to Google. Wouldn't that be the other side of the "thought worker" coin ?
jules 16y ago
This goes both ways. Things you learn on your own time benefit Google. So why does the copyright only go one way? Why is Google entitled to things it didn't pay for?
- bugsy 16y ago
  I also wonder this regarding the Google Books settlement.

andreyf 16y ago

Think about it: you hire someone to solve a problem. You pay them to figure it out and implement. Then they turn around and implement the same solution, which you paid them to think about, for someone else? That's perfectly fine, and happening all the time. Google got the fastest JS interpreter among all the major browsers (Chrome's V8) by hiring the guy Sun paid a lot of money to do nothing but think about virtual machines for a couple of years. Just because Sun paid for the development of HotSpot doesn't give them any kind of ownership over the ideas, with one exception: for some ideas, they can get government enforced limited time monopolies for the sake of "promoting the Progress of Science and useful Arts" by filing patents for them. But how this applies to Google employees, I don't know: it would seem that Google ought not to be able to claim ownership of all of my ideas simply because I work there while having them. That said, I really can't imagine it being much of a problem if someone just stays honest about things (i.e. not work on a major competitor to their own project).

cookiecaper 16y ago

>Thus, any similar work you do on your own time cannot be done without your brain using some of what is in your head, which you learned/figured out on company time. Should I be writing all my past employers checks because I am using things I learned "on their time"? I had a job where we used CakePHP, and I learned much about the framework during this job; now, should all my future CakePHP work (of which there is hopefully very little) belong to the employer that first facilitated my learning of CakePHP? Should I write a past employer a check when the bad management practices I observed there are avoided due to my past experience? Do they own my wisdom on that subject now? I think you can see where we're going with this. I think that anything that is not performed in the course of your ordinary job duties, not directly related to the company or its primary businesses, and performed outside of company time and facilities blatantly belongs to its original author. >Think about it: you hire someone to solve a problem. You pay them to figure it out and implement. Then they turn around and implement the same solution, which you paid them to think about, for someone else? Uh, yeah, this happens all the time. That's what most consulting firms do. You think when you hire a web firm to build your e-commerce site they always start from scratch on the shopping cart program? The cart was written the first time they had an e-commerce job, and now they reuse it. This is good practice and totally kosher, and should be expected, unless you explicitly request a custom shopping cart program with copyright assignment.

kelnos 16y ago

Thus, any similar work you do on your own time cannot be done without your brain using some of what is in your head, which you learned/figured out on company time. Aside from information that is considered confidential by my employer (in which case it falls under the NDA I signed), what's in my head belongs to me. Yes: me. Just as my employer is able to use knowledge and experience that I've gained from working for previous employers (and on open source projects in my spare time), I must be able to use the knowledge and experience I've gained at my current employer in future (or even current, as long as it's not the same) work. A huge part of the reason I'm so good at the job I do now is because of the 5 years I spent working on Xfce. If my employer gets to leverage that, then I get to leverage what I've learned at my current job. It's mine, plain and simple. That may not be exactly what the law says -- it's hard to read it and specifically say what's allowed and what isn't without a lawyer, and even then I'm sure they disagree -- but anything less is knowledge-servitude. Now, as to the "similar" bit: I think a large company like Google could easily claim that the vast majority of personal projects done by its employees is "similar" enough to something someone somewhere in the company is working on that they are entitled to ownership under current law and policy. Even if it's not related to the work that the employee actually does for the company. And that's not cool. Yes, I think it's cool that Google is so willing to allow its employees to open source so much Google-owned code. But that's not enough. Look at it the other way: if it's "no big deal" for the employee to assign copyright to Google because it's released under a liberal open source license like BSD, then why isn't it "no big deal" to allow the employee to retain copyright? Aside from prestige, what does Google gain from owning copyright on BSD-licensed code? As a person who writes software, a part of my resume is the body of open source code listed under my copyright. Sure, you can look at commit logs to find out who wrote the code, but it's much less impressive to be a contributor listed under your employer's umbrella.

rdtsc 16y ago

> Software developers are thought workers ... That is why I think it should go both ways and they should be forced to pay overtime for whenever a worker claims to have "thought" about the problem in their free time. Imagine the scenario: you are on the beach with the family but, since you are a "thought" worker, your mind wonders so you think for 30 minutes about how to decrease the latency of that DB query. That should be 30 min of overtime billed to Google. Wouldn't that be the other side of the "thought worker" coin ?

jules 16y ago

This goes both ways. Things you learn on your own time benefit Google. So why does the copyright only go one way? Why is Google entitled to things it didn't pay for?

bugsy 16y ago
I also wonder this regarding the Google Books settlement.